I’ve got a Flex Monthly schedule with about 9 zones set to water on 3 specific days a week, but the schedule has decided that it should skip one of those days. The temperature here regularly goes above 100F and some of my zones are small, young shrubs that I don’t believe can tolerate only 2 waterings per week.
I don’t want to use the Fixed schedule type because I want to take advantage of the seasonal adjustment feature in the Flex schedules. I’d really like to tell Rachio to adjust the duration of watering, but not the interval.
Some of my zones aren’t so sensitive, so maybe an advanced setting in each zone would be better than a schedule-level setting. Perhaps a “Drought-Sensitive” check box that would tell Rachio to never skip watering it (when weather is dry).
As it is, it seems like my best option is to keep the Flex Monthly schedule and just remember to trigger the schedule manually once a week between the other two waterings. Not optimal.
Someone can correct me if there is a better way around this, but what I did was to change the nozzle inches per hour in the advanced settings for any zones I felt needed more or less water. The system may still not do each day you want, but since the waterings will be longer it should be ok. I have a couple zones with too many sprinklers on them so I lowered the nozzle inches by half and now they run twice as long as other zones. So far this seems to work for me anyways.
Good idea, but changing that setting doesn’t give the app enough push to make it water all the days I need. Those little shrubs aren’t able to absorb enough water to last 4 days, no matter how long the waterings are. Thanks for the idea though.
Well…since you have been watering this way, you are correct, you plants probably can’t go that long without water…
But, food for thought…I’m in Arizona, and we are seeing 105-110 temps this month (and a rather lackluster monsoon season) and my shrub zones regularly go 4-5 days between waterings, and 7-8 days for my tree zones. I water for longer durations (3+ hours on drip irrigation) less frequently, which leads to deeper, more drought tolerant plants.
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That would be great as a goal, but the shrubs are too young now. When they’ve got deeper roots longer intervals should work fine.
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Sure, but you can adjust root depth accordingly. If you are set at the default 15" now, raise it up to 12" (or more if you have a lot of small 1 gallon). That will increase the frequency. As the months go on, drop the root depth to promote that deep root growth.
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That looks like that did it! Thanks very much.
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