Hello,
I’ve had my Rachio for a year and a half. For this season, I switched from a fixed schedule to Flex Daily. For the most part, this has worked really well, but all of a sudden my system is overwatering. It’s like the controller is refusing to update the saturation on the zones even after it has run. The thing ran a full cycle last night and still shows all the zones at 0%. I’m about to bail on Flex Daily and just go back to fixed, but figured I’d check here first in case I’m missing something and/or if there’s any known issue(s) out there.
I’m now noticing that although the schedule runs and it shows up in the history, the schedule itself says there is “No recent” last run. This would make sense then why the saturation is never changing if Rachio thinks the zones have not run. Has anyone experienced this? Any insights anyone can provide?
I’m having the exact same problem @dabeamer ! Did you get it fixed ?
@laura.bauman & @franz, as you know I’ve been using Flex for years with little issue. I also have really long (7.5 hour) drip runs that right now should only be watering every few weeks. They’ve suddenly started running every day!
It seems that as @dabeamer mentions they don’t get reflected in the moisture balance tables, but they clearly show up in the history.
This seems to have started for me on the 17th for this zone, but on the 19th it started happening on my Trees zone, which also runs for hours. At this point I’m watering for over 11 hours a day. I think it’s happening on my Grass zone as well, the only other Flex zone I have.
@azdavidr I believe this is due to a known defect which happens when the flow controller gets disconnected from the controller. We don’t receive watering data and assume it is bottoming out each day.
Quick workaround is to remove the flow controller from your account. I will have the engineering team review and see what potential fix can be put into place.
I always loved the premise of the flow meter, but mine has not worked consistently for some time. I didn’t expect that it should have any impact on watering times/schedules. To me, the flow meter should only alert and/or stop watering due to the detection of a leak, never cause excess watering. Anyway, I guess I’ll just remove it for now to see if that resolves the issue. Given that the flow meter is discontinued, I guess there’s really no point in trying to get it working consistently.
I agree with @dabeamer, I wouldn’t expect a malfunctioning flow meter to have this kind of impact on my watering. It’s a meter, so you would think it would just measure and not have any control.
@franz, I replaced the batteries and tried the pairing process 3 or 4 times. In all cases it says the flow meter can’t pair. I’ve ensured the blinking light was on, etc. during the pairing process. Do I have any other options than to remove the meter?
@azdavidr Unfortunately in this case a software defect, and even more so firmware which is much harder to diagnose and test. Agreed should not have this behavior.
The last thing I would try is power cycling the controller, then battery cycle the flow meter.
That worked @franz, thanks. So should I be on the lookout for this to randomly happen again until there is a firmware update? Are firmware updates automatic ?
Ahhhhhrg… just found this thread after pulling my hair out for a few days. I have a couple zones that are soaked but still at 0% after nightly waterings. I have cycled the controller and reconnected the flow meter.
About to manually set zones to 100% to keep it from watering tonight but I’m seeing some real lag on the Soil Moisture charts in zone settings. Circle keeps spinning and then eventually I get a “Error loading data” message.
@Mearpond, The intent of the flow meter per my understanding was to provide accurate usage reporting and proactively identify system leaks. Unfortunately, this software defect meant it had a negative impact on Flex Daily schedules, but really there isn’t any upside for them.
As a point of note, the flow meter is discontinued so will be hard to find and mine has generally been unreliable so not something I’d personally recommend even if that weren’t the case.
