What changed in flex scheduling?

It could be just depleted. What do future waterings look like? They should be much more infrequent.

:cheers:

Once my dead spots green up, I’ll start dialing back my CC to see if that gets me a day off once in awhile

You are right, @azdavidr. They did drop it to 110%, and I remember being quite happy with the change because at 120% things were getting too dry before it watered. I’m wondering if there is a sweet spot somewhere in between.

@franz, thank you so much for taking the time to get involved in this conversation. I’ve noticed that most of the posts in this thread are from customers who are very happy with your product. I think we are just trying to tweek it better. Or we are just another year older and our memories are fading!!! :grin:

4 Likes

I’ve taken screenshots of the moisture levels before and after adjusting the root depth on zone 1 (the grass zone that doesn’t seem to be adjusting correctly) and zone 7 (the planter bed zone that does seem to adjust correctly) to show what I’m talking about.

These images show the moisture level in zone 1 with the root depth set at 8 inches.

So far so good. Now I changed the root depth to 25 inches in zone 1 and the moisture levels are as follows.

Okay, this is weird. Note how the graph above from June 2-8 changed. When I changed the root depth, it assumed that all the moisture is at the bottom of the root zone, which is incorrect.

Let’s look at zone 7. Here is the moisture level in zone 7 with the root depth set at 10 inches.

So far so good. Now I changed the root depth to 25 in zone 7 and the moisture levels changed as shown in the following images.

Now this looks correct. When I changed the root depth, the graph from June 2-8 shows the moisture at the top of the root zone, which is the correct behavior.

1 Like

Add me to the concerned, my sprinklers seem to be going all the time, even when I’ve had rain… I’m scared to see my water bill, but I will say, my lawn currently is the greenest in the neighborhood!

My bill for April was like 40 bucks higher than last year, but then again, my yard last year with how I use to water looked like this…

I’ve been thinking that Rachio is watering more this year than last, but obvisouly it’s in my head too. Mine waters almost daily (minus Saturday and Sunday, my mowing days). REALLY don’t remember getting the daily notifications last year of the grass watering. Seems counter-intuitive to the deeper root theory if it is watering daily. But I can’t complain, the Rachio controlled area of my lawn is the only area that looks good right now! :joy:

@franz, what would you say an appropriate AWC would be? I thought the .12 was default…

It does seem that my weekends off causes Rachio to struggle to “re-fill” the tank…

What’s going on here? Did you manually run it or something because I wouldn’t think the system would want to water that again

Nope…that happens all the time. Other than the weekends when I don’t let it water, it rarely comes close to AD. Here is the week before…same thing. Again, I don’t know if locking it out of weekend waterings is causing it since the duration will never change and it has to play catch up.

Here are the setting on this zone…unchanged since switching to warm season grass.

I bet that is it, I don’t block out any days so I don’t see that kind of behavior

I switched back to fixed interval this year. Flex just doesn’t work properly. End of story. My system will water ten times a month. This doesn’t belittle the value of the Iro, I would still highly recommend it, but not flex. The ET calculations are just wrong and it doesn’t handle seasonal changes well or at all.

@mckynzee
You were right about the one zone that I had set with a slight slope was causing the others to break up their watering when that zone was included, so I took your advise and set all the zone to “slope” and guess what? Nothing changed! They still don’t break up the waterings. I’ve tried all the slope settings and it still waters the full time unless my one zone (East House) is included. I even recreated the schedule and it still didn’t work. Looks like a bug to me!

@franz
I know you’re the pro, but Flax has definitely changed from last year. We’re having a hot, dry spell but this year it’s just pouring on the water, even before it got hot. Last year I couldn’t wait till the next watering date. This year I can’t wait for a day it doesn’t run.

Last year I set my coefficient to .8 per your advise last May and it worked great. I lowered it to .7 because it was watering so often and it dropped the ET a little but it didn’t slow the waterings. I think you need to get a handle on what’s causing this behavior before people start receiving their super high water bills.

Thanks!

Mike

I just got my super high water bill a few days ago. About had a heart attack. This is the most rachio has ever watered in the year plus that Ive had it and here on the texas gulf coast we were in the rainy season. Can’t even imagine whats going to happen in july and august when we are super hot and dry. I went in and manually changed all my root depths deeper. On the plus side, I do have the greenest lushes lawn in the neighborhood :slight_smile: , but not sure yet if the outrageous water bill was worth it…

1 Like

Just out of curiosity. Of those that seem affected if you compare degree days last year to this year are they similar? I know degree days are generally a value looked at for HVAC purposes, but I’d imagine there’s a somewhat related trend-line between degree days and evaporation in the warmer seasons. Maybe it would be a very rough way of estimating how much if any changes in weather year to year have affected your watering.

1 Like

According to my electricity provider, last month was 1 degree warmer than previous year

Just out of curiosity, what was your reasoning for changing your root depth? Are you wanting your grass to water less frequently?

I am new to Rachio and installed the unit in early spring. I set it up using the Flexible daily and my yard is being watered like crazy. My last water bill was higher than I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even want to think about what my bill will look like this next month. I bought this unit to save me money but it looks like it’s going to cost me a fortune.

I assumed that by leaving the unit alone it would get caught up and save me some money down the road. It’s been up and running now for several months so it should be caught up. It’s watering several times per week. It currently shows 6 watering days on the schedule over the next 11 days. I don’t need stats to know that is way too much.

I am about to punt this experiment and switch to a fixed schedule but hopefully some advice will fix my problem.

My unit watered 4 hours and 19 mins this morning covering 7 zones and smart cycle. Checking the available water after the watering only shows .15 inch. Additionally, the moister level dropped to 30% down from 57% yesterday even after watering. Seems like the something is wrong here. Shouldn’t my moister levels increase after watering?

@macwinpro Hi, startup a new thread in the Flex daily forum and post some screenshots of your zone settings and we’ll get you situated. Also include a screenshot of one of your moisture graphs with the details expanded.

1 Like

will do thanks

2 Likes

Yes - because my water bill was the highest I’ve ever had last month