Feature request: "Cool off"

I was excited to see a slew of updates in the app today but disappointed to see a feature that I have been waiting for omitted: “Cool off”

Please consider adding this feature to your next major update. As of now, when it is over 90 degrees on full sun zones, I have to manually run the sprinkler for 10-15 minutes in the peak of the day. This water is unlikely to reach the roots, but it is known within the industry that doing so is helpful to prevent damage to the grass blades in abnormally hot weather. It would be nice if this were configurable within Rachio to automatically do this for me. Perhaps 3 settings: trigger temperature, cool off duration, frequency of cool offs while the current temperature is above the trigger temperature.

Thank you for reading!

3 Likes

Didn’t know this. Thank you!

Best regards,

Bill

1 Like

Also worth noting that watering during the day can ‘burn your grass’ because it turns water droplets into thousands of little magnifying glasses is a complete myth.

2 Likes

Man, you’re just a walking compendium of knowledge today! Didn’t know that watering my grass at 2 PM in the afternoon on a 110 degree F day here in Dallas would do anything except burn up the grass! That’s what everyone says!

Thank you.

Best regards,

Bill

1 Like

Some literature on this: http://gsrpdf.lib.msu.edu/ticpdf.py?file=/article/dowling-meentemeyer-ten-6-2-17.pdf

Specifically “1. HAND WATERING AND SYRINGING”

Obviously, we don’t have these resources in residential irrigation systems, but a cool off feature should help achieve a similar result.

I’m ‘in!’ I’m going to implement this immediately!

I can do it now (versus waiting for Rachio to do it) only because I have a pretty solid real time energy monitoring/controller system at my residence ( see http://www.neukranz.com ) that includes outside temperature sensing and then being able to take actions with interfaced equipment (like the Iro2) based on the temperature readings.

In my case I’ll have to do these summary tasks:

  1. Set up a ‘run every zone for 15 min. starting at 2 PM’ schedule in my Iro2.

  2. Implement a hardwired connection between my Iro2’s Rain/Freeze port and my monitoring/control system such that I’m programatically controlling ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ on the Rain/Freeze port terminals.

  3. Put some logic in my monitoring/control system that says "if outside ambient temp is < 100 degrees F at 2 PM then ‘close’ the Rain/Freeze port terminals. And then open back up a few minutes later. This logic will prevent my newly added ‘run every zone for 15 min. starting at 2 PM’ schedule from actually running except on 100 degree or hotter days.

Cool!

Best regards,

Bill

@a0128958 - Bill, isn’t there a Dallas regulation prohibiting watering from 10 AM to 6 PM from April 1 to October 30 that would play havoc with the “cool off” implementation?