That can be your opinion, but there are plenty of users working very well on Flex Daily scheduling. Being that it is so advanced, you do need to make sure that you have all your settings dialed in, but once you do, it does work, and works very well.
The biggest issue is that consumers, and in many cases “professionals” (read the guy who cuts your grass), have this idea that I need to water every day for 15 minutes or whatever…that just isn’t the case. Longer, less frequent watering will promote healthier lawns and foliage. So when you go from your previous controller settings, to what Rachio does, it looks “wrong”, but I can assure you that it is the better way to water…
With the old thinking that @tmcgahey mentioned, it makes it hard to really trust the algorithms in the controller once everything is dialed in. At first, I did not want to trust and almost killed the grass from underwatering. I actually sometimes still question things for a minute and then let it be. As mentioned, it does promote healthier lawns & foliage which includes being drought resistant.
That’s exactly why I just unplugged that Rachio. It was watering the lawn nearly every day for seven hours. It’s pouring over 3in of water on my yard every watering. It should be watering more around 1-2 per week. After giving it three weeks to figure it out, it seemed the only way to get that to happen was fixed scheduling. I just reconnected the Rainmachine and I’m back to getting the proper amount of water on my lawn with watering 3 times a week and a 2:40 program. I’d rather deal with them locking features I rarely used behind a subscription than a controller that wants to waste 4x the amount of water.
Do you know about how long it took to adjust? I had mine connected for three weeks with no change except for skipping from rain. I was using a daily flex, not a monthly.
Well, not sure what setting options RainMachine has, but if you were actually putting down 3" of water, and Rachio was watering every day, there was something a miss in your settings, plain and simple. If you’d like to create a post and have the community walk through your settings, you are more than welcome, otherwise i dont really know what to tell you. Again in the middle of AZ summer, my grass zones don’t even run EVERY day…
I am with @tmcgahey - @theindiearmy - if you would like create another thread post the setting for the zone and here in the community you have some brilliant folks who can help you dialing those settings and try it with one zone first and see how it goes I can almost guarantee you the ounce you enter the right information into Rachio you’ll be happy with flex daily and it’ll run on autopilot
Settings are the exact same. One is watering 5x as much. But yea…I’m the problem. No need on the new thread, don’t want to be part of a community of people who are just going to blame the user and make excuses for a product. I’ve used plenty of controllers over the years and know my system very well. I’m not the issue here and its really disheartening that you’d make excuses for a damn white box over being respectful to another human being.
How am I bring disrespectful? I have no idea how the Rain Machine works, but I’ve set up about a dozen Rachio units of my own friends and family, let alone countless people we’ve helped on this community. If your Rachio is watering that much, something isn’t right in the settings.
But you obviously know more than me about the Rachio, and landscape watering in general, so enjoy the Rain Machine. I’m truly sorry that you have zero desire to learn.
@theindiearmy, we are trying to be helpful, especially with the common problems that we see. In many ways, we look at it as a process of elimination to figure out what is going on. It kind of reminds me of someone calling in to customer service about their computer not turnings on and getting responses like, is the computer plugged in?, have you tried a light in the same socket?, did you push the power button?, etc.
I checked out the RainMachine demo to compare with what Rachio has on the zone settings (I hope I get them all and aligned them correctly, maybe there are things we can learn from this exercise):
Rachio
RainMachine
Vegetation Type
Vegetation Type
Spray Head
Sprinkler Head Type
Soil Type
Soil Type
Exposure
Sun Exposure
Slope
Slope
Flow Settings
Flow
Area
Area
Available Water
Field Capacity
Root Depth
Allowed Depletion
Efficiency
Crop Coefficient
Nozzle Inches Per Hour
Soil Moisture
Soil Water Surplus
Well, that is what I see at this time. Please let me know if I missed anything. I am sure each controller takes most of those variables and uses them in their algorithm. If any of those have a typographical error, that can adversely affect the outcome. The same can happen if the default values are used. It is also possible that a software bug exists that is affecting the outcome. It may be helpful to have more than one set of eyes looking over the settings to see if any accidental error was made or something needs adjustment. Some may even enter the data into a spreadsheet to compare the results. If the results are way off, it might be a software bug. Ideally, a screenshot from both might be helpful. Anyway, that is all if you would like to accept some help.
Thank you @Thomas_Lerman for taking the time to do that!!!
This points out the exact thing I was trying to get at. RainMachine has all the same general specs that Rachio does. Problem is, if you chose “spray heads” in each controller, we have don’t know if they use the same default values. Pop up spray heads can vary WILDLY between manufacturers and series. One spray head might put down 1.25"/hr, while a non HE-VAN nozzle can put down over 3"/hr! That is where the advanced settings in Rachio come into play. Being able to dial in the nozzle inches per hour for YOUR YARD is a fantastic feature, and is very important that the setting be accurate for Flex Daily to work.
For one of my four drip-system zones, I have Allow Depletion set to 50%, but this morning, the soil moisture was showing as 28%, and the next run is still two days off, with high temps in the 80s and no rain in the forecast. My hydrangeas were sagging badly, so I did a quick run for 56 minutes, but that shouldn’t have been necessary if the Rachio 3 was working correctly, right? Is something amiss here? Thanks.
Rachio will show 0% when the soil moisture is at your selected depletion level. So Rachio would show 0% when the soil moisture is at your selected 50%. When Rachio was showing 28% that really means your soil moisture is at 78%.
