Berumda defaults and restrictions

[mikeinDFW]

Hey all! Hopefully this hasn’t been asked a million times - I didn’t see anything on this with a (admittedly quick) scroll through existing topics.

I am in North Texas, with a bermuda grass lawn. Several well known authorities in the area recommend giving Bermuda 1" of water per week in the heat of summer. I also subscribe to an automated service that sends me a weekly text/email every Monday that tells me how much water I need to put down for this week, always in quarter inch increments. With my old Rainbird manual system, I had all zones configured to put out 1" of water (I have a mix of rotors and pop ups), and based on that weekly communication I would just adjust the water budget percentage to, say, 50% if I only needed to put out half an inch that week.

Also, I can only water on Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday, so my understanding is a fixed schedule is a must with Rachio.

I have a Rachio 3 I just installed, and so far the closest I have come to re-creating my old watering system is to create 4 schedules - one for 1" per zone, one for .75" per zone, etc. I then manually select which one to run once I get the automated text/email.

I would hope that I could just set up the 1" per zone schedule, and the Rachio would be able to leverage the weather information it accesses to automatically adjust the timings down as appropriate. Essentially automating the text/email and manual setting of water budget I used to do.

Is there a way to do this? I did a quick test since we got a ton of rain this morning and set up the 1" schedule to run this evening, and it looks like the watering times are all the originals and not adjusted for the rain.

Hopefully this made sense!

Thanks in advance.

[rraisley]

@mikeinDFW

I would hope that I could just set up the 1" per zone schedule, and the Rachio would be able to leverage the weather information it accesses to automatically adjust the timings down as appropriate. Essentially automating the text/email and manual setting of water budget I used to do.

You can. If that’s what you want, set up a Fixed schedule (you’ll have to play with it to get the 1" per week), with the amount of water you want AT THAT TIME OF YEAR. Turn ON Seasonal Shift for it to adjust each month to change the “water budget” for you.

I’ve heard the 1" water per week too, but don’t believe that’s enough for hot weather. Currently, North Texas is running a FRET value of about 1.5" per week, so with Bermudagrass Crop Coefficient of 0.60, that works out to 0.9" per week. Whoops, maybe 1" is okay.

Is there a way to do this? I did a quick test since we got a ton of rain this morning and set up the 1" schedule to run this evening, and it looks like the watering times are all the originals and not adjusted for the rain.

Flex Monthly and Fixed schedules do not directly account for rain. They will not water if you have a specified amount of rain or more, but that’s it. Flex Daily DOES use the rain amount to determine exactly when to water, and considers ACTUAL temperatures rather than historic temperatures. But it will probably use more water than you anticipate, at least in hotter weather.

[mikeinDFW]

Thank you for the response! So it sounds like there isn’t a way using a fixed schedule to adjust the watering times based on recent and/or upcoming precipitation.

That seems odd as I would have thought that would be a pretty common scenario. Lots of places have water restrictions that make that flex schedules impractical. Saying I need to put down an inch of water per week between rain and my sprinkler system combined would be a fairly normal thing? I’m basically just setting an upper bound on how long a given zone will run, with the thought that rain could decrease that amount.

I guess I have a totally manual workaround, but I’m surprised it is necessary!