Flex Daily Schedule Weather Skip Missing & Zone Saturation Incorrect

After getting the sprinkler situation in order I have turned on Daily Flex schedule for all my zones. I noticed two things

  1. Under the schedule for Weather Intelligence, the option for Rain Skip, Saturation Skip, Seasonal Shift doesn’t show anymore. I just see Wind and Freeze skip
  2. The saturation levels for zones 2 - 5 show 0% while zones 1 and 6 seem to be reporting fine when it has been watering them all daily for a minute or so.

Is that normal or have I messed up somewhere when setting up this schedule ?

  1. Yes it is normal. Flex daily looks at all weather intelligence in basically real time, and will skip according to ALL weather conditions. The only ones you can opt in or out of would be the wind and freeze.

  2. Chances are, with the way your zones are set up (vegetation type, nozzle type, PR) the 1 minute watering each day wasn’t enough to even register any moisture level.

If you need some help with your zone setup, post your settings here and we can go over them.

Thanks for the reply :slight_smile: Ok that makes a lot of sense as to why those options don’t show anymore

Zone 1 and Zone 6

  • Shrubs

  • Fixed Spray Head

  • Clay Loam

  • Lots of Sun

  • Slight Slope

  • Root Depth 2 inches

  • Efficiency 80%

  • Crop Coeff 50%

  • Nozzle 1.5 inches per hr

Zone 2, 3, 4, 5 ( slight difference in sun exposure and area, but rest is the same )

  • Warm Season Grass

  • Fixed Spray Head

  • Clay

  • Lots of sun

  • Root Dept .25 inch

  • Efficiency 80%

  • Crop Coefficient 65%

  • Nozzle inches per hour 1.5 in

First off…

  1. You have different soil settings for the two types of vegetation. Is there a reason?

  2. Just to confirm, your shrubs are utilizing a spray nozzle? Do you know the brand and/or model of the nozzle? This will help ensure that we have the inches per hour set up correctly. Same goes for the grass zones. Same nozzle brand and model as the shrubs?

  3. Even if these are new shrubs, 2" root depth is way too shallow. Are these newly planted shrubs, or existing? If existing, what was your watering schedule like prior to installing Rachio, or leading up to the change to Flex Daily.

  4. Even brand new grass is going to have roots deeper than a 1/4" (if you can visibly see grass growing). Is this a newly planted or sodded lawn?

  1. Yes, my water district had sent over a guy to do an evaluation of the sprinkler system. He is experienced in the area and suggested that usually in areas with just shrubs they tend to mix some loam. The grass is purely heavy clay. I can change it to all clay, I didnt notice much difference in watering time.

  2. These are all hunter nozzles. Yes the shrubs are all using a spray nozzle. They are a mix of 12H, 12Q,12 VAN and 15 SST ( zone 6, shrub)

  3. The house is 3 years old and the plants were put in around that time. Same for the grass, so its definitely sodded. The previous watering schedule was flat 5 minutes per zone, every day. The guy had suggested that since I was basically over watering, the clay soil would harden making it difficult for the plants to have deep roots but with a proper watering schedule ( like the rachio ) deeper roots can be established.

Can you confirm nozzle model number? The PR on the Hunter Spray nozzles can be anywhere from 1" to 3" per hour.

Sure i can get in to my yard tomorrow morning and get that information.

@kashifkhan @tmcgahey is spot on, zones 2 - 5 aren’t irrigating enough to go over the evapotranspiration for the day. This chart shows your irrigation (+) at .02 inches daily and the crop evapotranspiration (-) well above that.

:cheers:

Its dark out so ill get the nozzle model in the morning. I remember setting the daily flex during the summer and it had longer watering times for those zones. Am I right in assuming that because of the season and weather its watering less since the grass is dormant or should I bump it up a bit ?

@kashifkhan Your root zone depth (for zone 2) is set to 0.25 inches. The default for warm season grass is 9 inches :wink:

Flex daily times never change unless you update zone characteristics (or the schedule duration). The only thing that will change throughout the year should be watering frequency.

:cheers:

doh, spot on I did change the settings after speaking with the lawn care person sent by the district. I might have to double check his estimates then

Dang 4.21" of rain forecasted!??!

@tmcgahey

LOL just noticed that! Holy schnikes!

:cheers:

Yes so this is where it gets interesting…I live in Houston and we had crazy amounts of rain all through the night and all day today too. Yet rachio is saying that it would water tomorrow, the saving grace being that water sensor hasnt dried yet so nothing will run. Shouldnt the saturation skip have skipped maybe tomorrow and the day after ?

Can you post a picture of your moisture graph? If your root zone depth is incorrect it will still water about every day. Saturation skip does not apply to flex daily schedules. They only track to moisture levels. When depleted, it waters.

:cheers:

There it is. Let me know if you need other details. Majority of the roots after doing some samples were about quarter of an inch even after 3 year because of the clay.

If they truly are quarter of an inch roots, I would recommend not using flex daily. It will generally water much more frequently than normally rooted grass.

:cheers:

Thank you very much. The guy from the district gave me manual watering times with seasonal shifts, which I think Ill run till the roots are in a position to go monthly or daily flex

Zone/Station Number 1 2 3 4 5 6
Runtime 5 5 15 15 5 5
Cycles 3 3 3 3 3 3
Days 2 2 2 2 2 2
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Budget Factor % 35% 46% 64% 76% 96% 100% 96% 90% 85% 63% 44% 35%

I don’t know that you need to wait. You said your grass and plants were 3 years old, so they are relatively well established. If in the past you typically watered daily for short periods, you might have trained your roots not to go deep, but they would still be WAY deeper than 1/4".

I’d adjust the grass roots down to 5", and the shrubs to 12", and I’ld think you’d be pretty safe, assuming your other settings are fairly accurate…

2 Likes

Thank you for that, the suns out tomorrow so that will give me an opportunity to get in to other parts of my yard and check in on the root depth and get the average and report back. Thank you for both of yalls help with this