Hello community, new user here! I just set up my controller and chose to allow the Smart Cycle option which breaks up a given zone watering into several waterings with breaks in between to allow the water to soak in. I have 8 zones, and the system is saying my total run time to water them all according to my chosen settings is 7 hours and 24 minutes, with most zones running for around 1 hour 20 minutes. That seems like a LOT of watering, unless those run times include the breaks built into the Smart Cycle. Are the breaks counted when calculating run times? Thanks!
This means you didn’t set up your zones properly. Rachio gives us many options to tell its smart system about your environment. If you chose a specific soil type but didn’t take the time to indicate which nozzle type, then the recommended duration time for watering could be ridiculous.
Try and nail down as much as you can in your zone set up and consider using fixed schedules while overwriting the watering duration to what you think is best and can afford.
Couple of thoughts here:
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Smart cycle time is built into schedules, although whether there’s any cycle/soak activity at all is highly dependent on your zone setup (see the tables at the bottom of this: Smart Cycle, Manual Cycle and Soak Features). There are some combinations of nozzle, slope and soil types that’ll let you water for incredibly long amounts of time before cycling.
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Agreed with @jpellechi that zone setup is the key, especially if you’re thinking about using Flex schedules. The Rachio defaults are (generally) ok to start with here, but be aware that the defaults assume that you’ve got an established lawn in place (instead of starting from seed - if you’re doing that, dial the durations WAY back down).
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Keep in mind that the Rachio watering philosophy is to water less frequently, but for longer durations to encourage deeper root growth. This is the #1 differentiator between me and my neighbors that I’ve found - they’re watering each zone for 5-10 minutes every day whereas my system is going to water for much longer, but only 2-3 times a week per zone (assuming no rain).
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You can manually adjust the runtimes for any particular zone in a schedule after the schedule has been created. I’d focus on dialing in your zone configuration first and foremost, then considering manual changes.
Thank you both for your helpful advice! jpellechi, you are correct. My zones were set up incorrectly. I chose the wrong type of sprinkler head. When I switched it to Generic Rotary, the run times came down to a respectable 3 hours 40 minutes from 7 hours 29 minutes!
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One recommendation though: this is where the Rachio defaults got me in trouble. If I recall correctly, the default Rachio setting for precipitation rate on rotary nozzles is 1 inch/hr.
As I discovered later as I got more comfortable with the concepts, the precipitation rate of the Hunter PGP Ultra rotor with the 1.5/2.0 nozzles that I had installed was ~.35 inch/hour, meaning that I was going to substantially under-water my lawn over the long term if I followed the Rachio defaults for rotary nozzles.
Here’s an example of the Hunter spec sheet that I found (https://www.hunterindustries.com/print/pdf/node/862) and there are similar documents for all the major manufacturers.
The gold standard for determining your effective precipitation rate for an area is a catch cup test. More details on that here: How to use a catch cup test to assess Nozzle Inches Per Hour and Efficiency for Zone Advanced Settings
Maybe…maybe not. I have Hunter MP’s (would be considered a Rotary Nozzle) and in order to put down the needed water in a single run, I have to run each zone over an hour. The precipitation rate of the MP’s is only about .55"/hr.
Rotary Nozzles, and a PGP Ultra Rotor are not the same, just FYI. Rotary nozzles are like the replacement nozzles from K-Rain (Rachio sells), Rain Bird, or Hunter MP Rotators. These can replace traditional pop-up sprinkler nozzles to allow more uniform controlled watering. Rotors are a completely different animal.
Either way, the defaults in Rachio are about as good as they can be considering the VAST mix of precipitation rates of various manufacturers nozzles/rotors. I’ve found the default settings to be a pretty good average across manufacturers offerings. Depending on what you have, this could leave you a bit light on water, overwatering, or perfect. That is why dialing in the advanced settings can be so important, especially with Flex Daily schedules.
Maybe it’s the gold standard, but usually, not even close. The gold standard is to calibrate the flow and irrigation precipitation rate precisely using your water meter (GPM to a tenth from at least a 10 minute calibration), exact measurement of the area you’re irrigating (to the square foot). Do the zone as a whole - there will be some inefficiencies (Rachio’s default 80% efficiency setting is appropriate), but individual nozzle ratings are almost always significantly wrong from how you’ll set each one - and you’re interested in coverage, not volume, when setting nozzles. The best baseline setup is precision measurement of those two numbers - flow and area - both of which only rarely need to be re-measured.
IMHO, catch cup is a good test for people to see how horrible their coverage efficiency is. When I did mine, it really helped me dial in sprinkler positioning and arc to get a more uniform coverage.