There is something wrong with the Rachio programming right now. My monthly water usage year over year has almost doubled. It seems that there are more people having the same issues I am seeing with extreme over-watering.
I had set up and meticulously configured Flex schedules May of 2016, catch cups, tested soil type, slope, accurate sun exposures, measured square footage of zones, root depths, everything… The watering was working great, the lawn looked good but not over-watered, the watering frequency was at times less frequent than I thought it should be, but the results seemed to be good. Last year I saved approximately 25% on my overall water usage from the previous year due to Rachio working as advertised. Then something changed between the time I shut down for the winter and started up this spring.
This year 2017, I am seeing many, many problems. With no changes to my setup, I am seeing a substantial increase in watering. I have put in a support ticket with Rachio, however, all the suggestions have failed to change the watering frequency/total watering.
May '16 Water usage: 15,000 gals - ave temp 62 - total precip 1.20 inches : Water Bill $109.00
May '17 Water usage: 35,748 gals - ave temp 63 - total precip 0.59 inches : Water Bill $220.00
June '16 Water usage: 41,041 gals - ave temp 78 - total precip 0.20 inches : Water Bill $225.00
June '17 Water usage: 70,088 gals - ave temp 76 - total precip 0.25 inches : can’t wait to see it…
So far in June, with 2 days left in the month, my water usage is already almost double June of last year, same experience the previous month. I use IFTTT to log my watering in a google spreadsheet; when comparing June 2016 to 2017;
June 2016 46 total hours of watering.
June 2017 113 total hours of watering.
Support had me try a new weather station, this changed nothing.
Two weeks ago I tried adjusting crop coefficients slightly to see if this changed anything.
This week I decided to delete everything and set up from scratch. I deleted all schedules and re-ran the Setup Zones process. After accomplishing this, I went into the zones and noted that all the settings that I have customized, were still unchanged in the zones even though I had re-run the zone setup. I would think this would have reset everything to defaults but it did not. In spite of this, I reset my flex daily schedules and it appears I still have extremely high water times and frequency so it appears that this hasn’t helped anything. I again, today, I deleted Flex daily completely and am going to try flex monthly. We will see if it helps.
I am ready to throw in the towel on this one, Rachio this year has already cost me $100 more for May and now for June my bill is $220 more than last year. DOUBLE my bill each month so far this year, and I am not even in July yet… when my water bill is usually the highest. At this rate of increase, I will have a $1,000 water bill for July (assuming I left Rachio to do the watering).
I see a lot of people on here talking about Rachio seeming to overwater this year vs last year. There is obviously something wrong with Flex daily, this needs to be addressed.