I was wondering if it would be possible to provide knobs to the accounting engine? The reason I ask is that in Georgia, we have had rain everyday for 2 weeks and my rachio is ready to water again. The problem is if you step in the grass, water comes up between your toes. I would really like a few more knobs to play with on getting this more fire and forget.
@plainsane With our 2.0 release in May, we are introducing the concept of flex schedules. Flex schedules will not lock your system into watering whereas today it runs on a fixed pattern, doing adjustments for water budgeting and skipping with our virtual rain sensor (weather intelligence). This will automatically adjust the frequency for you. Closer to fire and forget. In a latter release we will expose the checkbook with ET, irrigation, and precipitation values since we track and store those daily anyways. Hope this helps.
Here is an explanation of the process:
Thanx for the reply, it sound like this will work for me. I keep my 419 very short (.20 inch) so watering more than once a week has proven to promote fungus growth in May/June so I hesitate at the moment to open up my turf zones to more than a single day in the week.
Another question, I’ll do the analysis myself but do you have any data showing it more efficient to water as many zones as possible on a single day in the week, or break it up to a zone a day?
I’m trying 1 zone a day in hopes that if I get a pop up shower during the week, I’m more likely to skip a few zones as the credits for the remaining zones triggers a skip. Any comments on this?
@plainsane Hmmm, that’s a tough one. Your answer almost seems like the most common sense approach, even if it adds complexity juggling those different days 
I’d be interested to know the outcome. Please keep us posted. 
i will, i still probably have another week’s worth of free time to finish my app that analyzes some historical data.
well, it is still early, but my self confirming bias is fully supported for the moment.
i got the last 9 years of climate data from noaa and put together a ghetto fabulous python script to look at the number of times my area had 6.35mm or more of precipitation and grouped them by day of the week. what i found thus far is that it is a pretty even distribution of rain occurrence across the week for the months of april, may, june, july and august.
{‘monday’: 32, ‘tuesday’: 30, ‘friday’: 32, ‘wednesday’: 27, ‘thrusday’: 31, ‘sunday’: 32, ‘saturday’: 33}
im going to continue to slice and dice the data, but i think im on the right try by running a zone a day…but again, self confirming bias is in full effect here so i need to break this day down further and begin analyzing each month/d.o.w. ill then break it down further by year/month/d.o.w.
here in ga, when we hit the hotter months it feels like those months provide more frequent but less quantity of water and i need to implement a ghetto version of how i understand the 2.0 account framework to see how many days i could have saved water based on accumulation rates (and a very rudimentary transpiration rate) to get a better feel for other methods to leverage mother nature.
this is route im following which is why i think i need a weeks worth of bonus time to get it done.
if anybody has any other ideas for data carving let me know, im trying to squeak every penny i can.
Hi @plainsane, any updates?
ill post some graphs i have put together next week. im stuck taking my own evap observations for now. im getting there.
well, currently this is what my rainfall/evaptrans graph looks like for the last few years.
i still need to verify the math, so there could be bugs (conversion to inches from mm), but at first glance it seems sane, 2013 was a crazy wet year for us, i had lots of stuff die in the yard from all the rain and was throwing heritage g like a maniac to keep the blight under control.
next step is to overlay the county water supplied. this will give me a decent picture.
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@plainsane Thanks for sharing! April/May look abnormally high?
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=rainfall_scorecard
it is not freakishly high.
i mean, it is within averages for my very specific area.
offical counts for my areas this past april was 8 inches (this is abnormally high) but what was leading me to this original post in the first place.
@plainsane Oh rainfall, I thought it was ET, never-mind!
yea, sorry, i should have been more specific. that graph just shows, how much rain has fallen, then et is removed from the accumulation each day based on the penmen estimate (probably have a few bugs in that calculation). im just trying to plot when my ground has fully dried.
going a minimum of 1 day with a dry root canopy is a big deal for me, i prefer 2 days at least.
i know im most likely pumping a dry well here, but im just trying to get my head around the concept of maximizing mother nature’s lovely and free yard juice.
@plainsane, we couldn’t agree more! Flex schedules will dramatically change the way the Iro responds to rain and ET changes, but we’re already working on the next level of conservation (deficit irrigation/managed stress) – which is not only good for the landscape (deeper roots and more drought resistant), but also the bottom line (less water = less evaporation and lower water bill) 
Excited to see the outcome of your testing. Thanks for sharing your graphs with us.
Best, Emil
yea, the deeper roots statement, we will see. i already use trinexapacethyl to reduce vertical growth of the turf, as a side effect it causes the roots to grow very deep and stolon production to explode.
this already reduces my water consumption a good bit. my neighbor who refused to apply anything non organic has to water his yard requires more frequent watering than mine. so once im into late june, i always scale back my seasonal adjustment without any visible stress to the turf. im usually at 35% seasonal adjustment around this time.
giberellic acid inhibitor for the win!
@plainsane, you know the tricks the pros use! 
For anyone that’s never heard about trinexapac-ethyl before, is a plant growth regulator and retardant which causes a temporary halt to the production of gibberellic acid, a plant growth hormone (which is responsible for the top growth of the plant). Basically, it promotes root growth, and not top growth. Commercial lawn care professionals use the chemical to reduce mowing frequency and watering requirements.
It’s so much fun. Found pace turf and turfpath and been running with them since.
I don’t know if these will work for ya, nothing special for 2014, and no pic this year yet, need sanding as I removed all the sweet gums in these pics.
https://plus.google.com/photos/115160284611819410284/albums/5616280483964319265?authkey=CJ23xJONnvXAsQE
https://plus.google.com/photos/115160284611819410284/albums/5883053858951991697?authkey=CI_Y_saLgJu6Qg