I have periodic pest control service done around my home where I need to turn off the sprinklers for 3 days (off 24 hours prior to service, off the day of service, and off 24 hours after sevice). I have been using the manual rain delay feature to keep the sprinklers off, but I have to remember to trigger the rain delay two days before the service. Is there a way to go into the calendar and set the delay weeks or even months ahead of time?
@gmac The easiest way to do this is with a IFTTT recipe using Google Calendar. Using Google Calendar, you can create as many triggers as you want that use the Rachio IFTTT action ‘Rain Delay’. The rain delay can be set for 1-7 days.
https://www.rach.io/blog/Cooking-with-Rachio-and-IFTTT?p=2689682971632801036
Let me know if you have any questions regarding this. Should allow you infinite flexibility!
Thanks and have great day.
Thank you for the quick reply! I wasn’t even aware of IFTTT. Great suggestion for a workaround! I don’t use Google calendar and obviously I am unfamiliar with IFTTT, but I was really hoping there was already an integrated solution in the app itself. Bummer there’s not. I was hoping when I pressed the manual rain delay button that a calendar popped up to select a start and end date for the delay. Instead, we can only select the number of days and the delay starts immediately. Oh, well. I’ll put a request for this in the “product suggestions” section. Thanks again for the help!
Unfortunately we don’t have a full calendar integration yet. I will put that into our 2.0 software backlog. I like the concept. Hopefully we can incorporate for Spring time watering.
Thanks!
That’s good news. I hope this gets implemented soon!
Follow-up question: Can I disable the Manual Rain Delay on a zone by zone or schedule by schedule basis? When I activate the “Manual Rain Delay”, this puts the entire system on hold, even though I have some indoor areas (greenhouse and covered patio) that I would like to continue to be watered even though it may be raining. I use the manual rain delay for various reasons (including the issue in my original post). Especially after a heavy rain, when I don’t need to water certain areas for a few days, the rain delay is really handy. Ideally, I would like the option to have certain zones or schedules ignore the manual rain delay feature. In the “Watering Time” set up, we have the option to toggle Weather Intelligence, could we also be given the option to toggle the Rain Delay either in the Watering Time or in the Zone set up?
@gmac Good question, currently it is for the whole device, but I understand your use case.
You essentially want to manually skip the next time a scheduled schedule runs.
Few options. You can disable the watering time in the app, but will have to remember to enable it.
I just submitted more actions to IFTTT that will allow you to skip a watering time. These new actions are skip watering time, pause, resume, and skip zone. They should be approved this week.
So, you could create a recipe that when you send an SMS or email, it will skip that watering time. It will run the next time so you don’t have to worry about re-enabling.
I know it’s not perfect but that should do the job. I don’t see us (in the near term) adding the functionality to rain delay watering times. The best in app choice would be to disable the watering time and re-enable when you see fit.
Hope that helps!
Why is it not possible to just set days and time in the calendar that disables watering? Would it not be the easiest way to implement water restrictions that are defined by cities?
@rwabel We are planning on having more advanced calendaring features but I don’t have an exact time frame. The device itself doesn’t truly run a calendar so it’s difficult to schedule or not schedule ‘individual’ days (i.e. exclude February 14th). We have ways to implement, it will just take some time to build that functionality from the apps all the way down to the device. Hope that helps!
+1 for this feature as well. I requested for the same feature to the support as well. Having an option to cancel an scheduled watering time from the calendar view will be a very good addition!