Hoping someone can help make sense of this for me. I installed the 3rd Gen 16 zone controller in May (only 11 zones being used). Ever since I installed it, it seems to be skipping pretty much all of my watering days. I’m in North Texas and the last month and change have been over 90* with rain maybe twice.
Initially, I had a flex daily schedule set up for Sun, Tues and Thurs. Usage for May is showing 1h28m which is most likely from the set up and some sprinkler repairs I had done.
Usage for June is showing 8h5m which I’m fairly certain was mostly me forcing it to water rather than relying on the schedule.
Usage so far for July is 3h15, again, with the bulk of that being forced to water.
Last night I attempted to delete all schedules and set new ones up hoping that would fix whatever issue I was experiencing. I checked before bed and it showed all of the zones scheduled to start last night/this morning. Woke up and they’re all showing 7/4 for last run, and 7/10 for next run. This was on a Fixed schedule and there was no rain.
Second issue, deleted all my schedules and set up a Fixed Schedule for Sun and Thurs. Went into the calendar and now until around November it was showing watering on Wed and Sat. Got into November and it went to Sun/Thurs and then got into March 2022 and it was showing Sat, Sun and Thurs.
Under a Flex Daily schedule its showing my soil moisture as 70% for most zones and 50% for my drip irrigation. I find this extremely hard to believe as, again, it has been close to 100* for a couple months with very little rain. There are brown spots all over my front yard, and this thing, no matter what I do, will not water when I need it to.
Any ideas?
@Calispcl07 - I’m in North Texas. Can pictures of a zone setting be posted? Rachio is sensitive to things like soil type, root depth, allowed depletion, etc. What climate skips are set? For example is wind skip is set with a low MPH setting it won’t water. There should have been notifications for each time it didn’t water - wind skip, saturation skip, etc. Which weather station is being used to tell Rachio the conditions?
I’m really not sure if pictures of zone settings can be posted, but for the most part they’re all the same.
I’m not entirely sure what they’re SUPPOSED to be though. I just built this house (Nov 2020) so the sod is less than a year old, so I couldn’t tell you root depth. It suggested Clay Loam for soil type, but I have no idea if that is accurate. I can’t find a way to look at the zone settings I guess unless I set the zones up again. If you know of a way, please feel free to enlighten me. I have freeze and wind skips set now, but there’s been very little wind (wind skip is set to 20mph+, and we’ve had nothing close to that recently), also it gives no reason as to why it was skipped last night. It has 0s for time saved and 0 Weather Intelligence Skips for May, June and so far for July and all of my notifications are set to both push and email for weather skips. So it doesn’t appear that it’s skipping it for any specific reason…it’s just…not doing it. I’m not sure about the weather station. Currently, the Weather Network option is selected. Should I change that to my local station, alone?
The controller that the builder put in the house has a rain sensor, and I initially thought maybe the dew in that was making the controller think it was raining, but I’ve disabled the sensor and it’s still skipping cycles.
Hi @Calispcl07,
I’m sorry to hear your having issues with both Flex Daily and Fixed. I’m sure we can help you out on the Community. One of the things that would be helpful is to post a picture of the Soil Moisture graph for at least one of your zones. You can get this by going to the Irrigation tab, selecting a zone, then select Moisture. The Soil Moisture graph tells Flex Daily’s watering story.
One thing to mention is that Flex Daily works best when there at least 4 allowed watering days. Limiting the number of allowed watering days usually has the impact of excessive watering, though. This might not related to the issue.
As @DLane mentioned the zone settings pictures can be helpful. You can get to the settings by going back from the Soil Moisture graph to the zone screen, then select “Edit” for basic zone settings or “Advanced” for Advanced Zone settings"
Regarding the issue with the Fixed schedule, I’m not certain what could be going on there. It sounds similar to an issue where the schedule starts on one day and ends on another. For example, a schedule starts on Wednesday at 11pm and Ends on Thursday at 1am. This will make the water drop on the calendar appear on a day other than what you chose. I have not seen an issue where the Fixed schedule future date has added an additional watering day.
@dane Thanks for the reply. I was able to find the soil moisture and graphs as well as the details for each zone. Would you want images of all of those? Like I said, I have 11 zones, so that would be a lot of images. I have a bubbler for my flower beds and front trees, fixed sprayer in the front, 8 sets of rotors and another fixes spray zone in the back.
Yeah, my schedule is currently set to run over night. I have it set to end before 4 (when I need to take my dogs out) so it usually kicks off around 10. Or should. So I kind of understood if it showed a drop on Saturday if I technically have it set to water on Sunday, but I don’t understand why it changes. I thought maybe since it seemed to change in spring and fall, it would have something to do with time changes, but if the system is set to start around 10pm, a one hour shift shouldn’t change the day. There is only one instance of it showing Saturday, Sunday AND Thursday, but the others it just shifts from Sat/Wed to Sun/Thurs.
I’ll gladly post images of the soil moisture graph and zone properties, just let me know which ones you’d like to see.
@Calispcl07 - just pick one. I’d say either one of the fixed sprays or rotors.
The “end before” option can behave really wierd - especially on Flex schedules as Dane mentioned. Rachio will always calculate the maximum run time needed, even if some zones won’t be watered due to available water. So I recommend hard setting a start time (e.g. in this case 10 PM).
There can be issues with watering overnight. I might suggest starting after the dogs are back in. If there isn’t enough time to run all the zones before any watering restrictions kick in (e.g. no watering between 10 AM and 4 PM), I’d create a second grouping of zones to run after the watering restriction time.
@DLane Yeah, I guess starting after I take the dogs out would be a better option since I have to get up earlier in the morning after moving. Otherwise it would be watering up til noon. So I’ll adjust that and see what happens.
One thing I just noticed as I was trying to get images of the zones, on the main page my back fixed sprayer is showing next run 7/10 and 40% soil moisture. When I select that zone, hit the Moisture button, it shows it depleted today and going up tomorrow. Back out of that and it shows next run at like 9pm tonight. Back out of that again to the main page with all the zones, it goes back to “Next run 7/10”.
I can continue this cycle ad nauseam.
I’ll get these images and try to figure out how to upload them here.
@DLane Here are a few. let me know if any of this helps.
Also, I realize the soil moisture is showing like 70%, and allowed depletion is 50%, but something in that equation is wrong. It sprinkled a little bit like 2 weekends ago and I force watered on the 4th but with as hot and dry it is, I just have a hard time believing that there’s that much moisture in the soil. Especially considering my grass is getting more and more brown, and doesn’t seem to bounce back after standing on it. It’s stressed and struggling, so I might need to get into the advanced settings? I just have no idea what to set any of that to.
@Calispcl07 - I used Silty Clay for my soil type. I might reduce the root depth at little say 6 - 7 inches. I’d also set the slope higher as that will do more cycle and soaking (personal preference).
For the Schedule, what options are selected for Weather Intelligence? Is Saturation Skip enabled?
Under the More tab, the History tab should show all the activity going on.
@DLane I’ll make those adjustments and see what happens.
Saturation skip isn’t an option for this flex daily, just freeze and wind. I’m assuming that’s just an option for the fixed schedule (as rain skip isnt an option for flex either, but does show up on fixed)
I’ve done a lot of messing around with settings and stuff, so my History tab isn’t too useful right now. Mostly just showing me fooling with stuff and force watering.
My first thought was root depth. 9" seems like it might be pretty deep for new sod. That will make a pretty big difference.
Also, did you have watering restrictions where you can just water those three days? If so, I would use a Fixed Schedule. I think you would be much happier.
@Linn I’m not really aware of any watering restrictions, I was just picking those days to give me ample time over the weekend to mow the grass if I needed to. The last thing I wanna do after a long 10 hour work day is go out into the 106* sun and mow an acre and a half.
@Calispcl07 - the saturation skip is for Fixed scheduled. I’d recommend changing everything over to a Fixed schedule. Then after a week or so of getting everything watered, move one rotor zone to a Flex schedule to get that zone dialed in, then start moving others to Flex.
@Calispcl07 - one other thing you can do is create a shadow zone that is not hooked up to anything. As you have 11 zones, configure zone 12 to have the same settings as an existing zone, but put zone 12 in a Flex Daily schedule and its mirror in a Fixed zone. This way you can see how the two different schedules operate given the same inputs.
And when you do that allow Flex Daily to run Monday through Friday.
@DLane @dane @Linn
Just an update for you guys. After adjusting the settings, and fiddling with a few other things, it appears that things are starting to work as advertised. The system seemed to work fine for the last run (up until my power went out) and something that has never happened before, I got a notification that it’ll skip the next cycle due to expected rainfall.
Never got a notification about any skips before, so it appears your suggestions have helped to get this back on track. I appreciate all the responses and the help on this! My grass appreciates it as well.