Anyone with Gen 3 in Toronto, Canada? Too many climate skips

Hi All,

After getting hit with a jaw dropping water bill this year, I decided to install Gen 3 in our house in Richmond Hill, Ontario. I made sure to set the advanced preferences for each zone, and I’m running Flex Daily Shedule.

However, it seems that the controller has been skipping too many schedules, especially during persistently sunny and dry weeks. It’s reporting that the zone soil moisture is over 100%, even though our flower bed’s soil is as dry as sand!

At this point, I’m not sure if the Toronto area is just not getting accurate weather intelligence or if it’s something else?

@ProjektR Can you PM me the email address for your Rachio account? It is different than the one used for the community account.

:cheers:

@ProjektR I believe a few things going on.

  • Flex does not actually skip, it only waters when it determines soil moisture is depleted
  • Are you sure that you have warm season grass? The default is a 9 inch root zone depth (versus 6 inch root zone depth for cool season grass). This has a big impact on watering frequency
  • For your flowers you have chosen shrubs for the zone type which has a 15 inch root zone depth. This will provide fairly infrequent, but deep watering. In contrast, our annuals crop type has a default of 4 inch root zone depth which will water more frequently, but less duration
  • Once you have the appropriate crop type chosen, if you want a little more frequent watering I would just adjust crop coefficient (how quickly the zone burns water) about 5-10% up.

Here is a little more information.

Please let us know if you have further questions.

:cheers:

@franz, thanks so much for looking into this for me. Based on your notes, I’ve changed my grass type to cool season. The flower bed zone is tricky as it has a combination of shrubs and annuals. I’ve now changed it to “annuals” to see if this affects the watering frequency. Unfortunately the warm season is almost over here in Toronto so I will have to follow up on this in several months :snowman_with_snow:

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@franz - as a follow up question. It’s been raining here almost every day for the past several days and yet the controller is showing my soil moisture to be 0%. Does it take under consideration the actual precipitation or only watering time?

To be honest I don’t know how well WI Plus weather network performs in Toronto. I’d choose a close by station. Looks like you have a few to choose from.

:cheers:

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I’m north of Toronto, have a Rachio 3 and the weather network you guys recommend (weather network) is not accurate. Raining right now and my screen in the weather section of my Rachio app shows sun and clouds. Is there a resolution to this problem??

I have the same issues in London, ON. Rachio weather stations all around me show the same (incorrect) forecasts. End up watering a lot when rain is in the Weather Channel or Environment Canada forecasts, and so I get no savings. Basically I have to keep an eye on the real weather forecasts and hit the “skip” button accordingly. Not a very smart watering system!

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So no fix? What the hell? That’s the whole point to this thing. I just replaced a RAINBIRD with a rain sensor only to have me become the rain sensor? Is it worth contacting support?

I thought Support visited these forums, but in two spots I see no responses, so maybe the direct approach is worth it.