I’ve just installed 8 zones and I’ve given Rachio lots of autonomy.
When i manually ran a Hydrawise controller previously I’d let each zone have about 10mins 3 times a week.
When I look at what Rachio wants to do, it’s going to run from 7pm to 5am tonight with various cycle soaks and repeated zones and then do nothing for 4 days.
Have I screwed up the setup? It’s hedges, beds and lawns.
Just seen the schedule video that’s says ‘don’t be worried about initial over watering’ haha
@sarachio and I thoroughly enjoy this response 
let us know if anything looks wonky going forward!
Hey @benflux. That sounds about right for the unit straight out of the box. I usually like to set it on a fixed schedule for a couple of weeks so that it can get a feel for the water table.
As is, you will get a bit more water than you expected but it will all work out in the end.
Welcome to the Rachio family. 
Wouldn’t it be better then to set up the rachio after a big rain soaking so our sprinklers wouldn’t have to do the initial drowning of everything? Im thinking of doing that since its going to rain a lot this week. I had to turn off the smart watering, it was costing me too much to do that initial setup. So I just run a programmed schedule, but the weather reports still influence rain delays etc. But I would like to use smart watering if it would save me money. Have you seen a san diego water bill lately?
The key factor is to at least have it plugged in and communicating with the weather updates. You can always set it for the delay and it wont water but will catch all the info from the weather updates.
San Diego water is not cheap. You are at the end of the stream as far as the water distribution goes. The last drops cost the most.
I am in the LA area. We are forced to conserve to avoid penalties. We did such a good job that they raised our rates for not using enough water.
@sandyeggo - one can manually edit the available water for each zone. So after a big rain that saturated the ground one could set each zone to 100% and start there. I think the best recommendation is to set one or two zones to flex daily and get those zones dialed into the local climate and then move the remaining zones to flex after the initial zone(s) are satisfactory. Rachio takes a little bit more work in the beginning, but pays for itself over the long run. There is a recent post were I think the savings in one month paid for a Rachio!
