I just installed my new Rachio controller and was excited to see that my flex schedule was working beautifully by delaying my watering schedule because of all the rain we’ve received. Then, I saw the app update was available with “as needed” scheduling. Sounded great, EXCEPT now I’m forced to use a fixed odd date interval in order to avoid watering illegally in my city!!! Why would you make this change??? I don’t want to be forced to water on every single odd day for just a few minutes. That makes absolutely no sense at all. The flex schedule was much more customizable and certainly more efficient especially since I have to abide by odd/even watering laws. PLEASE bring odd/even capability to “as needed” ASAP. Without odd/even combined with “as needed”, your product has become no more useful than my old controller with a rain sensor.
Hi @gosox1982 - thanks for the note. We will definitely be considering these types of features for ‘As needed’ schedules. Please keep in mind that you can keep using your Flex and we are not forcing you to switch to any of our new schedules. However, they are now available to you and we look forward to iterating on them with feedback from customers like you. Thanks again for the note.
One thing you might want to try out is one of our new interval schedules - choose ‘On Interval’ instead of ‘As Needed’ and and with Climate Skip enabled, you’ll have a similar schedule to your Flex. If you’d like to try it out first, I would just disable your Flex, so that you still have it, and then set up a new ‘On Interval’ schedule and see what you think. If you have different zone types (lawn, tress, xeriscape, etc.), I’d recommend grouping them into different schedules - we hope to make this easier to do in a future release. I think you’ll find this to be similar to Flex.
Unfortunately, I deleted my flex schedule figuring the new as needed schedule would be better. So now I’m stuck selecting an odd day at interval schedule which wants to water all my zones for 5-9 minutes every other day. That makes no sense since we got an inch of rain today. I guess I’ll have to try it and just use rain delay every day for a while. Really disappointing.
@gosox1982 If you PM me your username I’ll create a couple for you if you want to have a comparison. We definitely want to keep our users happy as we continue to iterate on the best possible solution.
Thanks and have a great day.
Pardon my ignorance but I have no idea how to PM you 
I created and disabled a couple for you. Hope this helps.
No worries, I was able to find your name using email address, you are good to go.
Thanks
I did this as well. I already miss my flex schedule.
Please add odd/even restrictions to “as needed” schedule.
Thanks.
@Mitch Definitely noted.
@plainsane @Mitch More than happy to create flex schedules for you if you want to do a comparison over the summer. Just PM or email me at franz@rachio.com.
We want to continue to engage with our users, listen, and build scheduling that is easy to setup and saves a ton of water.
I’m not ready yet. I just got confused as with the new schedule the interaction lead me to believe that I could put all zones in the water as needed but adjust a zone’s priority by moving up and down. Then I realized that all zones in that schedule will water if one needs to water. So now I’m back to a schedule per zone which gets me closer to flex. I just want a priority where my spray heads run first, mix in a drip while soaking if you want, I don’t care. Running my drip during daylight is fine, but not my spray heads, too much wind. So I’m hoping the order the schedules were defined, is the scheduling precedence, just like having multiple flexies
@plainsane I’ll jump in front of a locomotive for you, if you want to stay on flex and removed your old ones let me know and I’ll set you back up. Know that we are continuing to converge until we find the best balance.
I think the “as needed” schedules definitely need to allow for watering restrictions such as odd/even days or certain days of the week. The “as needed” function, just as the previous flex schedule, is really one of the key functions of Rachio.
And I for you. For now,let’s leave it be, I’m a burn the ships kind of guy, I’m just grumbling that I set fire before I got my captins log off the boat.
This unit is useless for us in Oklahoma if “as needed” doesn’t have option for Odd/Even. I’m sure other states have this water restriction mandatory also which impacts many of your current and potential users. That’s just basic requirement!! I recommended this to my friends and they bought it. And now odd/even is no longer support! I can’t recommend this system to anyone until this feature is brought back. Please reconsider and implement it before summer arrives. Thanks.
If you have watering restrictions, the way to handle this is with either an Interval or Specific Days schedule. These have all the same smarts as Water As Needed schedules, like rain/freeze/climate skips, but they will work with your restrictions.
For Odd/Even days, select On An Interval and then you specify Odd or Even days.
I think this needs to be a FEATURE - “As needed on odd days” or “As needed on even days” - read the customer suggestions and support forums and the consumers want both features integrated… Until then I am forced to change my google ratings and amazon reviews to low marks…
Thanks
I don’t think you get it - people are forced to water every other day with interval (odd/even days) and want to be able to water more “as needed” based on weather etc… (like 1x every 4 days or 6 days)… grass roots grow deeper if you water less frequently and with more volume in a specific time than every other day that we are forced to do with interval…
Maybe you need to hire someone to setup this feature if the SUPPORT team doesn’t know how to do something like this - wouldn’t think it would be to hard…
Rachio, Can you please expand on this?
I just ordered one yesterday, and today I see this thread.
As FYI, pretty much the entire great lakes region, and much of the midwest has laws which require an odd/even schedule. Typically people with odd numbered houses are allowed to water on the odd dates, and likewise for even. Fines for non-compliance are steep.
If it’s true that you don’t support odd/even schedules, then you are making criminals of your customers and your product is not fit for sale, and should be withdrawn.
or am I missing something?