Hi,
As I understand it, I can let Rachio control watering of each zone. How does it handle adjacent zones that water areas of each other - seems like only watering one zone would only put down 1/2 the amount of water in the adjacent zone thus making it water more shallowly?
Hopefully the question makes sense!
Ideally, every head would touch the adjoining heads, whether they are in the same or different zone. Most of the time, each zone will run in a schedule that will cover the areas between zones the same as within a zone. It is true that the delay between adjacent zones could be a bit of time causing a bit of cycle & time for the area. It does not seem to cause any issues for me. Zones can get out of sync with other zones when manually ran, but they can be brought back in sync.
You can usually minimize any effects of watering overlapping zones by careful measurement of the zones (pick and use the “line” separating the zones to calculate a good to-the-square-foot measurement of each with a border at that line), then put both zones in the same schedule. Even if the zones are on different schedules, both zones, when properly setup, will maintain sufficient moisture in their root zone. At root depth, the zones will likely be about equivalent or un-noticeably different.
As Thomas points out, even if you manually intervene and water one of the zones, Rachio knows about it and will continue to make adjustments to keep the available water in each zone’s profile in the proper ranges.
This actually doesn’t affect anything with how Rachio waters FYI. The only thing that tool does is help calculate the area of the zone if one wanted to utilize the usage reports.
Like @Thomas_Lerman said, in a perfect world, all sprinklers should overlap and each the next adjacent sprinkler. All manufacturer specs are assuming that overlap, as would any catch cup test you might do…
hi,
Maybe my questions wasn’t clear 
Let me try and explain a bit better…
Let’s say I have 2 zones, A & B. The sprinklers in them overlap. I ask Rachio to manage them which gives it the ability to water them separately (as far as I understand it) using Flex Daily. If Rachio choses to water zone A on day 1 and zone B on day 3, the overlapping parts of the zones will only get 1/2 the amount of water on day 1, and another half on day 3. Won’t this effectively cause shallower watering in those areas?
Thanks!
I would say yes, but nothing to worry about. Over the course of a week, it will usually be the same amount of water. It is usually recommended for the lawn to be on the same schedule. Unless some manual intervention occurs causing zones to get out of sync, they will run the same day.
Do you expect the zone settings to be different from each other? If not, they should stay sync’d up. Worst case, like @Thomas_Lerman said, in a weeks time, each zone should end up getting close to the same amount of water.