It seems to me that if the climate skip worked on a per-zone basis, creating a fixed schedule that waters every day would emulate flex nicely. Day restrictions could be implemented by skipping those days in the watering schedule. This would both simplify the configuration and allow the flexibility of the flex schedule. I’m not sure that “as needed” would even need to be separate with this setup. You’d just set up the maximum watering frequency you can tolerate/is allowed and then climate skip would take care of adjusting the frequency.
The only thing missing would be the nice feedback that the flex schedules give with respect to which zones are going to get watered in the future.
Am I missing something?
Honestly, my biggest hurdle is orthogonal to this issue: figuring out my zone parameters. Having just moved into a house 18 months ago with an irrigation system set up by the previous owners, I feel like it’ll take a lot of work to configure the zones correctly. All I know is they used four times our current water budget to keep the grass green.
I think for the folks that have restrictions the Iro needs to be asking daily “Am I restricted today?” and “Do I need water?”
By doing this, you can get this scenario (for each zone):
If I’m restricted today, delay until next un-restricted day.
If I need water and I’m not restricted, water.
If I need water, but it forecast calls for rain, check forecast an hour before. If no rain an hour before, water and recalculate MAD. If rain, recalculate MAD.
It’d be good to know approxmiately how long it rained on days it did rain to optimize MAD better if it’s not calculated.
I’m sure there is information I’m missing since only picking this thing up last week.
VERY disappointed with the loss of functionality in the new As Needed schedules. If I hadn’t already bought the Iro, I would not recommend purchasing it based on the new scheduling approach (and Rachio’s promise to discontinue flex schedules)
Flex Schedules = best thing since sliced bread, and is THE reason I bought the Iro.
Let me try to make this simple. Iro used to be smart - where it could water individual zones exactly when they need it, both skipping and accelerating waterings based on local actual weather and soil moisture balance calculations. Now it doesn’t do that. Now the only benefit of the Iro over a ‘dumb’ controller with rain sensor is that it ‘adjusts’ the schedule monthly based on completely irrelevant historical data.
To try to be more constructive, here are my observations and recommendations:
The 30-year average is irrelevant and unhelpful for any actual watering purpose. Plants only know if they actually have enough water or if they don’t. They don’t care what happened a year ago let alone 30 years ago. “Smooth Transitions month over month” don’t matter (plants don’t know what a ‘month’ is). The only goal of the Iro should be to make sure that they actually have enough water (without overwatering) on any given day. The flex schedules did this. The ‘as needed’ schedules don’t. Example: When I am having a heat wave in southern California in February, please come convince my plants that they don’t need water because the 30-year average said that it is winter and they don’t need water yet. (ok I failed at being constructive with that statement, but you get the point…)
The ‘As Needed’ schedule only has the ability to ‘skip’ a scheduled watering if the actual weather says that it isn’t needed, but it won’t do the opposite if the actual weather results in a need for MORE watering. There needs to be a way for the IRO to ADD a watering (or increase duration?) if the weather reality says it needs to.
The need for the end user to ‘group’ zones into separate schedules based on their (insert botany term here) characteristics - is preposterous, and further reduces the ‘smart’ nature of the Iro. I guess it isn’t that hard for me to just put each zone into it’s own schedule, but why take such a helpful functionality away? The flex schedules did the thinking for me for each zone (based on soil, sun exposure, plant types, etc). Now I have to do the thinking for the Iro even though it ‘could’ still figure it out? Please fix this!
The duration of watering is pre-set in the schedule (based on the 30year historical data), and is presumably the amount needed to ‘fill the tank’ from the maximum allowable depletion level. This is only the correct amount of water IF the ‘tank is actually empty’ when watering happens. If there is still moisture in the soil (but not enough to ‘skip’ the schedule), then this will be over-watering and wasting water. Flex schedules reflected this (by tracking moisture levels and adjusting on the fly), but the ‘As needed’ schedules don’t. Please allow the durations to be automatically adjusted based on the actual amount of water needed.
“Unlike Flex schedules which could run any combination on zones on a given allowed watering day, As Needed Schedule run ALL zones in the schedule in the same watering event”. Please explain how this is ‘smart’? Isn’t this going to waste water? If zones 1, 2, 3, and 4 are on the same schedule, and only zone 2 needs water, why does it make sense to water 1, 3 and 4? (again the flex schedules understood this important concept, but as-needed schedules don’t).
Please consider these issues and either fix them in ‘as needed’ schedules, or permanently reinstate the flex schedules. Your posts state that people were confused by flex schedules. If that is the case, then allow them to use the ‘as needed’ schedules if they are willing to accept a ‘partially smart’ irrigation controller, but don’t take away the flex schedules.
SMH… Not sure what to make of all this! Last season after sometime I finally got the Flex schedule dialed-in to end the season with a good-looking lawn. When the Gen 2 Iro was announced I questioned whether it was worth the upgrade, bit the bullet only cause of the discount offered to previous owners. I was really looking forward to this season’s software improvements. With all these posts about the 2.5 release I can’t help feeling disappointed prematurely. I say that cause I haven’t opened my irrigation system for this season yet.
I find myself more confused than ever before! I don’t know where to start… I’ve disabled the Standby mode to play around with creating schedules and was frightened by the watering schedules that were created. What’s worse is after everything I’ve read I’m not even sure I understand if the schedule will fluctuate… I just looked at the month of June and it has my lawn being watered for over 4 hrs every single day of the summer months! Is the schedule effected by watering from the system or just rain? Should I set up my rotary sprinklers on one zone and the sprays on another? If I setup 2 As Needed schedules 1 for rotary, 1 for sprays, can I schedule them for the same time and day? Can I reorder them? Why does a As Needed Schedule total out to over 5.5 hours yet the Flex pulls it off in 4?
Definitely need the ability to select watering days! Hoping for some much needed assistance, just glad my sprinklers are still off at the moment.
Agree 100% with padresfamily. Flex scheduling is what makes the Iro a smart controller and worth the price. Otherwise, not much different from the standard controllers I can buy at Home Depot. If you are overwhelmed, by start up support for flex schedules, put together some tutorials, videos are best, that explain the concepts and how to apply them instead of just pointing people to threads and articles.
I believe the new scheduling flow helps, but most users do not know their precipitation rates, root zone depths, etc. Open to ideas on how to better collect this information without burdening setup process.
Keep in mind Fixed is now Specific Day or On an Interval; one schedule type, three different modes.
I’d turn on Seasonal Shift to make your schedule intelligent with weather changes; this mimics the logic of As Needed schedules without changing your watering days.
Some utilities have been known to jump on this band wagon. Might be worth asking them if you haven’t already.
@aristobrat, we appreciate you giving the new schedules a test drive. You’ve pointed out some scheduling limitations that are better managed with Flex schedules.
I guess I’m not quite following. You aren’t gathering these for As Needed, so why use that as an excuse for abandoning Flex? Use the same default values for Flex that you are using for As Needed, and let the user tweak them in “expert mode” if they so desire. As I recall, you can set up a Flex schedule without doing all the work implied in your comment.
I guess I’m not quite following. You aren’t gathering these for As Needed, so why use that as an excuse for abandoning Flex? Use the same default values for Flex that you are using for As Needed, and let the user tweak them in “expert mode” if they so desire. As I recall, you can set up a Flex schedule without doing all the work implied in your comment.
I have been hanging back in a wait and see mode since the update to 2.5 as my interactions with the Rachio team have been nothing but great so far, so I wanted to give the benefit the doubt to them. However, I think what stonecliff says here is really important.
It has been stated numerous times that the primary driver to the As Needed schedules was that user were having issues getting Flex setup. While the new setup process does seem simple, I don’t think it has solved the problem. The confusion with Flex was never with setting up the schedule. Flex was even easier to setup than the new As Needed schedule, it was one click and Flex did the rest (that’s where the magic was). The confusing part of the setup was building your zones! As far as I can tell you still need to setup your zones before you create a new schedule. The zones are were all the foreign (for most) settings are such as soil type, slope, emitter type etc. If you do not get that stuff right how will the As Needed plan provide any better duration and frequency than Flex?
To me it seems like more focus should have been place in helping the users setup their Zones rather than simplifying a Schedule that was already a one click setup. Full disclosure, I gave the As Needed plan a try today with 3 new schedules. I have 4 grass zones in one schedule and 2 separate schedules the drip systems on my trees and plants. After today I have already gone back to the Flex as I could tell after one day that As Needed was watering my grass zones that did not need it, simply because they are in the same schedule. I am going to stick with Flex for the time being until all this shakes out, but I really hope we land somewhere in the middle where we can simplify the setup process but keep the flexibility that Flex provided.
@emil, so now I’m here… Can you address the reason the system sits around doing nothing when other zones are waiting to be watered? I.e., stacked schedules. The system knows the entire to do list for the day, why not just move on to the next zone during a soak time and come back later? Flex did this correctly.
@stonecliff We are still using zone attributes to set the initial values for As Needed schedules. I think the difference is that we let the user tweak their schedules by minutes, instead of digging into and researching zone attributes. The idea behind the new schedules was also not to abandon flex, but take some of the best ideas and pull them into more predictable schedules that can be edited by minutes. We will continue to iterate
I desperately need to be able to set run times up to 10 hours for our desert climate based on emitters. I can’t set a duration for longer than 3 hours with the current app. our web interface. Someone was looking into the I issue but I haven’t seen a response. When will that be addressed?
Awesome discussion. We appreciate everyone’s feedback. Moving forward, I’ll do my best to address scheduling concerns that are support related. The Product team will be following up to feature recommendations.
@cwiedmann, just curious, what was the hardest zone setting for you to figure out?
Are you referring to the water budget provided by the city/water utility?
Could you elaborate? We track the rainfall total in inches and apply against ET (also measured in inches) if you have Climate Skip enabled.
@padresfamily, I still believe the Rachio controller adds immense value in being able to predictively skip a watering schedule by leveraging weather data. No ‘dumb’ controllers offer this feature.
The old Water Budgeting feature, which adjusted watering duration on a weekly basis using real time ET, created confusion for many users as the adjustments did not align with perception of how the schedule should be trending.
Flex never adjusted your watering durations, nor would it water when the tank was empty unless you had changed MAD to 99%. Flex defaulted to 50% MAD, so it would effectively refill your water tank at half of a tank. Water durations did not change as the size of the water tank doesn’t change. Just like your car, you have X gallons of fule in your tank and how you drive determines how long the fuel will last you.
@johnesc, that’s not good. What can we do to help reduce the confusion? As Needed schedules will change intervals on a monthly basis per historical ET.
Curious what type of soil you have your zones setup with? Schedule duration depends on your zone attributes and bundling of zones on the schedule; perhaps your watering duration is the same, but your schedule duration is longer due to Smart Cycle?
@stonecliff, the same defaults are between Flex & As Needed. As @brad mentioned, the difference is that we let the user tweak their schedules by minutes, instead of digging into and researching zone attributes, or “expert mode”.
@aaronlhx82, interested to know what you think we could do to make the zone setup process easier? The benefit to As Needed schedules is that if you get these default incorrect, you can adjust the schedules by time (minutes) and not zone attributes.
@steve28, we do not currently blend schedules. Interesting idea for the product team to consider in the future.
@azdavidr, we haven’t forgotten about you. I’ll circle back with the web team to see why this functionally isn’t working on the web app.
@steve28 Schedules run fairly independently right now. Our thought behind new schedules was that they could be grouped by plant type and these would be able to cycle soak. I’ll make sure we capture this as an improvement. We are working on a new method of implementing schedules on the controller that will be more flexible, and capable of handling this kind of thing. It’s still a few months away.
Interesting point. Sounds like all of this angst could have been avoided had you simply added the capability to Flex schedules to adjust by minutes instead of having to modify the attributes (though you were already part way there with the ability to adjust the Flex cycles up and down). The only way to fix this mess is to replace As Needed with Flex, but maybe add some of the ease of use you are seeking to Flex adjustments. Until you go back to the Flex concept, you cannot fix the (1) stacked schedules problem, (2) the need to occasionally accelerate watering, (3) the need for a user to create separate schedules with zones based on identical evapotranspiration characteristics to enable deep watering, or (4) the underwatering that will necessarily occur when a schedule is skipped if the schedule is truly based on deep watering principles.
Sure @brad. If I’m wrong, please tell me ! According to my soil survey map you have a link to on your website (http://websoilsurvey.sc.egov.usda.gov/App/HomePage.htm), I have Antho soil loam. I’m getting the watering info. from the plant watering guide here, which is specifically for the Arizona Desert:
I have various sized shrubs, but use a 3’ canopy here to find a happy medium. The table below suggests 8 gallons of water required to wet the root zone for 3’ canopy shrubs.
For trees I’m using 4.5ft, even though I have some ficus trees that must be pushing 20ft canopies, I also have some rather young trees on the same zone. Assuming the 6ft, 26 gallons are required.
I love the way the ‘As Needed’ schedules throttle the intervals. The shrubs “As Needed” schedule is repeating every 9 days this month, moving to every 6 days in July. That’s right where I want to be in the chart above. Likewise, the trees go from every 10 days in April, to every 7 days in July. Again, right where I want to be according to the chart above. However, please do tell me if I’m missing something on the long run times!!!
@emil - I think I’d still use the present tense to describe my difficulty with the zone parameters. I’m actually uncertain about all the parameters, but the ones I worry about most are the crop type and precipitation rate. Our backyard has tree roots under the lawn and one of the zones waters both the lawn and the plants around it. I’m not really sure how to deal with either of those.
The front lawn has regular sprinklers, but they seem to be spaced about 6 feet apart with a 10 foot radius, so I’m thinking the precipitation rate is probably higher than would be expected. There are runoff issues in the front yard that lead me to believe that there must be more water being delivered than expected, because even at 4 minutes there is significant runoff.
Bottom line is that it looks like I’ll have to do some work to correctly configure the zones. I’ve ordered catch cups as a first step, but I suspect issues like the mixed zones may require some redesign to solve.
On the water budget, it’s the utility’s water budget that they’ve assigned us due to the drought. We’re allowed to use 13 CCF a month, but when we moved in the sprinklers were on a schedule that was using about 50-60 CCF per month. Since I have no contact information for the landscaper who originally did the system, I don’t have any way of knowing why they were using so much water and what the settings were before they put the house on the market. Given the way the zones were designed it’s not clear to me that whoever designed the system knew what they were doing anyway.
I’m sttarting from zero knowledge on sprinkler system design and trying to set up the parameters correctly is daunting, so I understand why you would want to allow configuration by minutes instead of by zone parameters, but some of the other features of the flex schedules such as the individual zone skipping make the flex schedules easier to deal with than the new schedules. I’m at a loss how I should optimally split up my 10 zones into separate schedules to optimize the watering because I don’t have the background to know which zones are similar enough to group together.
This addresses my curiosity. I’m assuming flex doesn’t currently do climate skip? Also, are you getting this information only if we use a weather station reporting precipitation?
Walked out of the house to 1”+ of water ponding on my front flower/bush zone this morning — and the sprinklers were still going!!
My schedules were all still set to As Needed, I hadn’t disabled them and switched back to Flex yet.
Before I went to bed last night, I reviewed the Watering Schedule, as well as the Moisture Level of each zone.
Next scheduled watering times were Sunday 24th (grass zones) and Monday 25th (front bush/flower bed zone).
The front bed zone Moisture Level was at 72%.
At 4:00 AM this morning, the Iro decided that the 72% Moisture Level of the front bed zone wouldn’t make it until the next As Needed scheduled watering day (Monday). So it decided to overfill that zone today, starting at 5:00 AM, so that it would make it.
I stopped it at a little bit after 8:00 AM, when I walked out of the house to go to work and saw the zone was underneath water in many areas (and water spilling out of the zone over the sidewalks in most areas). At that point, the As Needed schedule had overfilled the the zone up to 120% Moisture Level and still had more than an hour to go (some of that was probably soak time, but still).
And there’s a 80% chance of rain tomorrow, with .35” inches predicted.
Ugh. Every 5 days seems to be the cadence that As Needed waters in my area, this time of the year. Very frustrating to see my mulch floating (and water spilling out of this zone) because this zone had to be overwatered in order to stay on that As Needed cadence.
