I am trying to use all of the intelligence of this controller with the Flex daily being my only schedule as well as the Weather Intelligence Plus instead of pointing only to my weather monitor.
Everything seems to be working correctly as we recently got quite a bit of rain from TS Beta however I am not seeing any of the skips or savings that this controller is providing.
Looking through forum posts it seems like this has been mentioned all the way back to 2019 but I don’t see anything under the product suggestions about this, I would think this would be right at the top of the list of features with all of the intelligence built into this device.
With Flex Daily, you won’t see skips as your system is watering when water is needed. So no need to “skip”. Also, you won’t see savings, for the same reason.
There have been some discussions on this in the past. If you are using Flex Daily, what would you compare it to? The reason you see it on a fixed schedule is that you are watering anyway, and if you get rain, it doesn’t need to water. But you still might be overwatering on that schedule. (or underwatering as well). So on your Flex Daily schedule, what fixed schedule would it compare to for savings? One that waters every day? Every other day? Every 3 days? There just isn’t a way to know what other schedule to base it on.
So, even though you aren’t seeing statistics on “skips” and “savings”, you really ARE having your cake and eating it too by not wasting water and using it just when needed!!! The moisture level detail charts are really your “cake”. The other schedules don’t get that.
I would highly recommend that you use a PWS nearby to you that appears to be reporting accurate precipitation. Flex Daily will work better by having that precip amount be close to you, rather than using Weather Intelligence Plus. The rest of the data other than precip will come from Weather Intelligence Plus anyway.
This is another question I had but was planning on doing separate research but would the weather intelligence plus not take into account my weather station (I am reporting up to weather underground) as well as other stations further away I am guessing at a lower weight to create an overall average?
Also how am I to make sure this daily decision takes into account forecasted rain in the future, I guess it’s the name weather intelligence plus that makes me think it’s taking into account so much more, and if I just choose my local weather station that any future forecasts are no longer considered.
I guess I really don’t understand this mindset, if I setup a flex daily (keyword here being daily) then it’s supposed to make a daily decision on whether to water or not, if it decides not to water why is this not considered a skip? Why wouldn’t this savings be calculated and shown?
It’s the Fixed Schedule that I would expect not to account for weather and just run the scheduled regardless of what else is going on like a simple controller would do.
As Linn said, Flex Daily takes all that into account as the norm, so it’s not considered a skip or a savings. It may still water on a day that forecasts rain, depending on temperatures and rain expected.
Maybe an analogy I just thought of: New cars today have automatic braking, that will possibly Save Your Life by braking to prevent a collision. That’s Fixed/Manual schedule, with a modifier.
When YOU drive your car, you’re sensing traffic, surroundings, speed, etc. If the car in front of you slows, you slow, or stop as required. You don’t normally consider that you’re Saving a Life every time you brake; it’s just your normal operation. That’s Flex Daily.
It does run it’s normal schedule, and does not account for weather (defined as temperature, humidity, wind, sun), but Rain Skip, which you control the amount of, can have it hold off and go to the next watering time.
Not for me. My front yard went dormant. I had to drop any flex, weather predicting reactions and saturation estimation. This summer is not unusual for the Kansas City area, we’ll have predictions of rain every week and it doesn’t rain. So the Rachio was not watering for over a week. This is a new house, new yard.
I started running quick runs to get it every other day, then every day. So I just disabled those and set an every day schedule. The back yard recovered but the front didn’t, not until the last week or so, when it cooled off, it’s starting to be ok. I just aerated and over-seeded, I’ll be okay next year.
I do want to understand the flex daily thing better. I understand and like the idea but this year at least, it didn’t work. I have a weather station, with a rain sensor. So my weather station new that it didn’t actually rain, for weeks. I would like it the system would use that rain sensor to override weather predictions.
I personally haven’t had any issues with the amount of water Rachio is providing or the decisions it makes to not water, I just wish that my daily flex considered days it doesn’t water as a skip. It’s odd that everyone in here keeps telling me it takes that into account so it doesn’t consider it a skip, sorry but if it’s a daily check and it doesn’t water that is a skip.
You are correct Linn, I don’t have any serious issues with this device and it’s way better than other smart controllers I have used, I just wished I could check the console every now and then and pat myself on the back for all the water I saved
I was also confused by never seeing any “skips” using the flex daily schedule. And it still feels a little worrisome.
But I’ve noticed that sometimes I do get days where my schedule doesn’t run the usual. And other times, my normal runtime gets reduced by a lot if it has rained a little recently. For example, one of my run days only ran the sprinklers for 20 minutes instead of the usual 90+ min.
But again, never any notification of modified runtime or skips.
I think, at least in this case, a skip is a /cancelled/ watering cycle, not a /delayed/ one. If you have a Fixed schedule, and it’s to water Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and it rains such that Wednesday is skipped, then that cycle is never done. It goes to the /next/ time it would water, in this case Saturday. That is what is defined here as a Skip. With Flex Daily, and no daily restrictions, it just delays the watering cycle, until the next time it determines it’s necessary. So they don’t consider it a skip.
It, and many things, can get confusing. But Rachio is defining it this way, which makes sense to me, and you might disagree with the definition, but should accept that this is the way it works.
It’s like the Weather Seasonal Shift feature, which not available with Flex Daily. Sure, Flex Daily does a much better version of Seasonal Shift, because it considers actual Daily temperatures, while Seasonal Shift only considers Historic Monthly temperatures. But it’s not the same, so the term and feature is not available with Flex Daily.
I understand, just don’t agree with it, and it goes back to the cake comment. I am being forced to choose between intelligence in the schedule and intelligence in the water savings which I don’t think is how it should be.
