Add Silt Loam as a soil type

[stonecliff]

It has different AWC and water intake characteristics than the ones in your list. Would be helpful to add it as a soil type. It’s a soil that is common here in NJ.

[Miles267]

Agreed. That is what the soil survey reports in my area as well.

Silty Clay Loam - Translates how in soil types for a Zone

sounds like fun…not sure when I really get time to do that on a weekend, but who knows

[jgrn307]

I’d like to re bump this; I did a soil test and I’m getting silty loam, but for some reason this isn’t a setting. Why don’t you guys have all the soil types in the system?

[waded]

Ditto. Although the Boise, ID area defaults to Loam, I believe Silt Loam is common here. My soil analysis puts my yard soil right in the middle of the Silt Loam region shown in the pyramid here: https://support.rachio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010542588-What-type-of-soil-do-I-have-

[Kubisuro]

The terrific news is, Rachio doesn’t lock you in to soil types — you can change the Available Water Content manually to match your true soil properties. Soil setting only affects the AWC.

Maybe your soil analysis includes the AWC? If not, see this awesome post on how to find your likely AWC:

Using Web Soil Survey to define your soil settings

I found through my own experience that setting an incorrect soil type can have a dramatic impact on the watering duration and frequency of flex schedules. I’d lived in my home for 22 years and always assumed we had a lot of clay in our desert soil. Through these forums I found that was not the case, and instead we have sandy loam. Changing that setting really had a big impact on my scheduling. Finding out your soil type can be confusing, but I personally found the USDA Web Soil Survey site t…

Changing AWC:
https://support.rachio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010542148-What-are-Advanced-Zone-Settings-

[waded]

Starting from the “What type of soil do I have” article Rachio links to right out of the app, if a customer finds they have a particular type by the jar test they recommended, it would be simpler if the app allowed selection of types that are possible outcomes of that test, silt loam in this case, as a starting point.

The Web Soil Survey site’s quite cool though! It’s a bit of a rabbit hole; I spent a good bit of time exploring around! (It’s still incorrect about the type in my yard, anyway… it appears this silt was moved in from a half mile up the valley; our yard is 12" taller than the two neighboring plats.)

[Kubisuro]

Yeah the soil surveys are completed at a fairly small scale and the boundaries between units almost seem arbitrary. It seems mappers relied on big landforms & changes in geology, veg types for boundaries (which makes sense). There’s all kinds of soil in between major map units. Almost an impossible task to be more than general. But they are a great resource and certainly critical for agriculture & engineering as a first step. Nothing beats a lab analysis of your home soil!