I’ve had my Rachio Gen 2 for a couple of years and really enjoy it. I’ve always used the Fixed Schedule type due to watering restrictions in my city. For kicks, I created a second schedule (this time, a Flex Monthly) for comparison. My Fixed schedule shows a watering duration of 55 minutes, but the Flex Monthly schedule shows a watering duration of 3 hours 5 minutes with all other settings identical between the two schedules. Is that 3 hours 5 minutes per WEEK perhaps, or per session? If per session, why such a large difference?
Schedules’ Details:
Able to run on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday
6 zones
Smart Cycle for soaking
Weather Intelligence is ON for all five settings (rain skip, freeze skip, wind skip, saturation skip, seasonal shift, although the seasonal shift check box doesn’t exist for the Flex Monthly schedule since it is inherent to that schedule type and can’t be turned off anyway)
Few / several thoughts.
That is a per session time.
The first session for flex daily / monthly will run long because the system will try to fill the zone’s water table.
From there the system judges which zone needs to run based on the zone draining to the allowable depletion level. So at times only one zone will (need to) run.
Thank you for the quick response, that makes sense. Now I understand better thanks to your help! I will continue with my Fixed Schedule setting due to city watering restrictions.
Do you by chance have any drip lines? I know when I transitioned to Flex Monthly I had the exact same thought as you. But, after digging into the schedules I noticed all the time was focused on drip lines. I used to only run them for ~15mins per city guidelines but always had issue that required self watering. Now with the flex scheduling running my flower beds once a week at 1hr20mins I don’t have to self water. My actually sprinkler heads only went up 5–10mins depending on zone and how set up each zone for sprinkler type/sun/etc…
