Hey Emil, thanks for the quick reply. I have the numbers at home and I’ll be able to check then.
But I think we’re making this more confusing than it needs to be.
Seems like everyone just wants to know how many gallons Iro has used. And the most exact way would be an input for GPM/zone.
@basher519, understood. We’ll brainstorm how to make this easier. All ideas are welcomed and appreciated. We want to make it as simple as possible.
It seems to me, as one who is setting up a drip irrigation system comprised of various types of emitters, it would be great to be able to specify more than one emitter type and the quantity of emitters in each zone.
For me, the actual area of the landscaping isn’t relevant because only specific plants within the area are actually being watered. Thus in one zone of drought tolerant plants I have some emitters that put out 1 gallon per hour and others that put out 2. I know the exact number of each.
However, while I can set a watering schedule based on recommendations for gallons per plant per session it doesn’t result in accurate calculations of gallons used.
I would love to figure out how to make it reflect how much water is actually being used.
@rickandersonaia, are these all low flow emitters? i.e. micro spray & drip emitters. Or are they a mix of high flow emitters? i.e. bubbler & soaker hose
Sounds like your drip lines were designed properly. A drip line should be designed with the water requirements of the plants in mind if the vegetation is mixed; i.e. trees, shrubs and perennials.
Mixed vegetation and nozzles makes scheduling difficult as the Iro uses the precip rate of the nozzle and the vegetation type to calculate the run time of each zone. Assuming these are mixed, you’ll need to override the recommended schedule to match the output of the emitters with the water requirements of the vegetation.
As for calculations, we might be able to accomplish better reporting by calculating the average precipitation rate of all your emitters.
Please keep in mind, the Iro’s reporting is only an estimated usage/savings – for details on how the gallons are calculated, please refer to this support article.
Hope this helps. Happy to help you calculate the average precip rate for the emitters if needed.
Yes, they are all low flow emitters. I was excited about the Rachio because I thought it would optimize my watering based on plant type, emitter count and weather. I see that it probably does that just fine for lawns but for my type of irrigation system and plants it doesn’t do much more than a standard timer. Unless I’m mistaken.
It looks like if I set everything manually then it won’t increase watering on very hot days or decrease watering on cool days, which is what I was expecting.
@rickandersonaia, the Iro will do all of this, but drip zones are difficult to recommend schedules for if the vegetation and/or nozzles are mixed. From a design perspective, the vegetation for each zone should be the same (i.e. root zone depth), then nozzles should be the same type and general output. I’m not certain from the feedback provided if your drip zones are setup like this. Perhaps you could provide some additional detail? Here’s a great post that goes into the details of designing a drip zone/system.
The Iro can still accomplish daily or weekly adjustments to your watering schedules regardless of if Rachio or you determine the base durations. Fixed Schedules water on a static schedule; adjusting watering durations on a weekly basis using historical data and skipping schedules based on weather forecasts. Flex Schedules water only when needed; dynamically adjusting watering days/frequency based on soil moisture needs, calculated using daily ET data.
I hope this helps. Would either scheduling option work for you?
Right now I have a fixed watering schedule with 4 zones. 3 of the zones water shrubs that California classifies as “Waterwise” medium water use for the desert. This means that in November each shrub should receive 1.6 gallons 3x per week. Each shrub has it’s own emitter.
The 4th zone waters the trees. Each tree has its own series of emitters with the citrus trees getting more than the drought tolerant trees.
There is no lawn, there are no annuals.
I would strongly prefer the flex schedule as in the desert (Palm Springs area) watering is significantly different between summer and winter.
@rickandersonaia, ah so in your situation you’d like to be able to set the gallon requirements for each zone and let the Iro calculate the durations necessary? That is very different approach, but an interesting one.
Perfect. This helps assuming each plant is receiving the proper amount of water based on the duration of the watering time (and time of year).
We understand. I think we could work backwards to the durations you’d need to setup on your Flex schedule. I assume you know the the watering requirements on a monthly basis? If you could provide these to me, I’d like to do some testing with them to see if there are any simple work arounds for your configuration.
Our water district publishes guidelines for low water landscaping. I’m getting my values from this page in their guide - http://web.cvwd.org/conservation/lush_book/lush2.html
I’ve attached a screen shot of the watering table - http://screencast.com/t/aOWj3gcFnl
Just purchased a rachio. My very first observation is that it is very silly to have the “gallons” on the main dashboard and have no decent indication of how it is calculated.
I have read the above thread and see that there currently is no intention of allowing entry of GPM, which I guess is fine given the need or PR for the other calculations anyway.
How about a very simple workaround? On the edit zone page, please add a calculated field (not editable) that shows the GPM for that zone. It can have a link to how to set nozzles/area to make the number accurate. Perhaps even have it in a different color/font/italic if it is the default sq ft of 1000.
Yes, I have found the formula. Yes, I can do the math. But things like the nozzle flow rate are hidden on the web page. With the GPM so hidden and also dependent on the sq ft, its seams wrong to be claiming gallons saved.
We will be doing a Spring release, 2.5, which I hope to incoporate this feature if we have time. Stay tuned! 
For those of you that are trying to figure out your square footage of your zones, Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) will tell you exactly what you’re sq. footage is and then you can use this in your zone settings. I did not see anyone mention it here, so I thought I would throw it out.
Open a web browser and goto http://maps.google.com
Enter the address of the lawn in question.
In the lower left corner of the map click on the “Earth” icon, this will bring up a satellite view of your home.
Zoom in to the appropriate level you desire.
Place your mouse at the point you want to start the measuring process.
Right click on the map and select “Measure Distance” from the menu.
A small box will appear on the bottom of the page telling you to click on the map to trace the path you want to measure.
You can enter as many points as you like. As you go, the distance continues to calculate.
If you complete your measurement at the point you started, you will not get a “Total Area” in both sq. ft and sq. meters.
Hope this helps someone out, it did me!
Very cool, I’d like to incorporate that into our software one day 
I hope this involves an etch a sketch throw back
Now that I’ve been working it for a few months I think it would be great if there were a system that was entirely different for drip irrigation setups. Otherwise the statistics are useless.
Since we can generally tell how much water is coming from any given emitter, and we know how many emitters are on each zone, it would be great if there were a calculation system that could accurately accommodate that.
A gpm input per zone would make life pretty dang easy…juuuuuuust saying
Ya, I apologize, we just haven’t had time to build this 
@rickandersonaia & @basher519, I know the product team has been discussing simplifying zone setup. You can use your water meter to fine tune your nozzle’s precipitation rate by using this equation:
PR = ((96.25(A)/C)
96.25 = constant that converts gallons per minute (GPM) to inches per hour. It is derived from 60 minutes per hour divided by 7.48 gallons
per cubic foot. times 12 inches per foot.
A = gallons from water meter
C = zone square footage
I would think this feature would be a higher priority for the rachio development team as this feature would be used to greatly improve the estimated water used/saved per cycle. This would not only improve the data to each user, but it would greatly improve their water usage data as a whole. I would be willing to guess that the “Community Savings” number currently has a large margin of error because you cannot vouch to whether or not each user’s data is correct. Not every user is going to modify the actual square footage of their zones in the advanced features, so i feel the numbers could be grossly incorrect. My system uses around 1600 gallons per cycle, but the first time a cycle ran using my Rachio, the app reported that I used twice as much as what I actually used (this was before I changed the square footage of my zones). If my water estimates are this far off using the default settings, imagine how inaccurate the water used/savings statistics are for the “community savings” as a whole.
Implementing a GPM per zone input would greatly improve the accuracy of the gallons used and saved as well as making the “community savings” estimates much more accurate. We all strive for more accurate information and I feel this feature would greatly help to make the water usage and savings statistics much more accurate for everyone.