I am still running the Rachio 3 in simulation mode. I have two zones for plants on Flex Daily, and one zone for lawn on Flex monthly. Reason for putting the lawn on flex monthly is because when also on flex daily, it appears it synchronizes the watering date with the plant zone, instead of giving it its own dates.
The Lawn flex monthly schedule is set to do rain skip with the default .125”, the weather station is my own (on Weather underground), yet I see a strange situation.
We had 0.7” rain on Dec 29th, and the flex monthly adjusted the schedule to water the lawn on January 19th. Good so far
We had another 0.1” of rain on January 9th, no change. Still good.
Then yesterday and today (Jan 15 -16) we have had 0.75” of rain (reported by the weather station), yet the schedule for the lawn still plans to water the 19th…
I know the Rachio is getting the rain info, because the plant zone on flex daily shows the replenishing of the moisture on 15-16 and went back up to 110% moisture.
So it seems to imply that Flex monthly rain skip is not using the precipitation to trigger a skip. If so what does it actually use?
Note: Many people seem to have reported similar issues, and I have not seen any official answer from Rachio. Rachio, can you clarify what is used to trigger a flex monthly rain skip?
Thank you
Well looking at the detailed article on Rain Skip, it only checks for rain in the previous or next 24hours.
So as a result, despite the soil being saturated by 0.75" of rain 3 days ago it did the watering
@franz, I think it would greatly improve FLex Monthly rain skip, if it was using a similar soil saturation prediction as Flex daily, to compute if a rain skip is needed, by looking further back on rain events and estimating evaporation.
As it stands, FLex Monthly rain skip seems to have a very limited use.
Thanks. Looking at the schedule it is watering every couple weeks (or more) at this point. Saturation skip looks back past 24 hours (last watering) and then forward to the next watering. Since there is such a big gap it determines that you can not make it to the next watering. If this was during watering season pretty sure it would have skipped. As you already stated flex daily is the “smartest” of the three and would have filled up the reservoir and not have watered until it determined reservoir was depleted.
Hope this sheds some light on the flex monthly schedule.
@franz
It is good to know that it is looking back to last watering and forward to next watering and not just 24hours (you should correct the rain skip article… )
That said, not skipping because it would not last until next watering would be understandable for a fixed schedule, but not so much for Flex Monthly.
The whole principle of flex monthly should be in flex. Flex monthly is able to change the schedule interval for seasons, why would it not be able to change it for a rain Skip?
If the current flex monthly interval is 2 weeks and there is rain in between, it should just shift the schedule accordingly.
In my case, it should have assessed until when the water from the rain would last, and shift the schedule to make that date the next watering, then back to every 2 weeks after that.
Given you have all the software to estimate until when water from a rain event will last, it seems it should be easy to change the flex monthly rain skip logic to do the above.
@Franz
I already have the two plant zones on flex daily, and will likely put the lawn on that too.
Right now I am testing and providing feedback on how I think the system could be improved
That said there are two small issues with putting the lawn on Flex daily like the plant zones.
1- If put in the same schedule, it seems to synchronize watering dates, when in fact the plant should water less frequently as they have deeper roots.
2- If having two Flex daily Schedules there is no way to differentiate them on the calendar as they show with the same icon/color. It would greatly help if each schedule could be visualized in the calendar with a separate Icon/color. May be keep the same color for the watering type as now, but add a number in the drop icon so we know which schedule that is.
Thank you for listening
The zones will water independently based on their individual soil moisture levels. If they are watering the same day(s) could be a coincidence. Different root zone depths (dependent on the crop type) will water at different cycles.
Definitely a request we have had in the past. I will forward to the product team. Big overhaul coming soon that will get us closer.
It may look like it syncs the flex daily’s but in the long run it won’t. At least in my experience. This assumes you have all the details of plant root depth and so forth set correctly. It will sometimes coincide, and others times won’t. It depends on so many variables and some of those will likely mean some days they water the same and some days they don’t. The key as you mention is they don’t water the same always, which they won’t if you let it be. And if it does, you ,Igor look at settings and see why it is showing the lawn and plants having their water capacity depleted at basically the same rate.
Oh my yard, not only does everything water at the same time once in a while, but the majority of the time not even every zone of grass will water at the same time because some of my grass gets a lot more sun than other areas, and luckily the zones coincide with this difference as well.
Is there a reason you want to stick with flex monthly and not go with the flexier schedule flex daily?