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Flex Daily Scheduling Postponing Zones

Schedules & Zones Flex Daily
#1

I have a Flex daily schedule set up to finish by sunrise. It contains 5 zones.

When I set it all up the calendar said the first run would be 6-7 hours. However, when it was time to start the run at 11:00 pm it decided to only do one zone. It waited until 4:30 am and ran the one zone. The calendar said the other 4 zones would be done the next night.

I thought the problem might be that the zones showed moisture levels of 1%-5%, probably because I did quick runs of a minute or two when testing the wiring. I emptied the remaining 4 zones.

The second night, when it was time to run it decided to only run 2 of the 4 zones. The other 2 zones were postponed until the next day.

The third night it only did one of the remaining 2 zones. The fourth night id finally did the last zone.

What is causing this? The various zones are generally expecting to run 30-120 minutes, so they can easily fit in a single night. Is this typical? I am in Phoenix; when we get to hot weather it will be disastrous if the schedule postpones zones for 2-4 days after they get to 0%.

#2

The moisture graph for each zone should tell you why it watered when it did. Normally, watering should start at the same time on any day it waters, and that time would/should be sunrise minus the total of all the zones times. But Flex Daily should water each zone as required, not necessarily all or several the same day.

#3

OK, how does the Moisture graph tell me why it watered when it did? I assumed that it would water when the % got to zero, or maybe close to 0. That seems not to be the case; I zeroed (emptied) out 4 zones and it did not water them all.

I can eventually see when a zone was watered, but I see no explanations of why it is doing what it does. A zone can sit at 0% for several days before it decides to water; apparently it does not go below 0%. There is plenty of time to do multiple zones, it is not postponing zones because there are not enough hours in the night before sunrise.

Hmmm, I can’t scroll the Moisture graph back to see the days when it postponed zones, leaving them at 0% for multiple days. I wanted to post an image showing the multiple days at 0%:frowning: I see that some zones act like they will water when they get down to 5-8%, although I never know if they will actually water on that day. The Moisture graph will indicate the zone should water tonight, but when the time comes it decides not to water. The zones watered each night do not correspond to what the Moisture Graph says is going to happen.

Is there a debug log somewhere where one can see why it does what it does?

It is a little difficult to see which zones were watered; the History tab seems to give a better view. The Calendar is tough to make out. For example, it had been watering at about 4:30AM, picking 1 or 2 zones to water for perhaps an hour or so. The last couple of days it has started at 10:30PM the previous day for unknown reasons, again only doing one zone for about an hour. This can show up as 2 waterings on the same day; once at 4:30am and again that same day at 10:30pm.

It would sure be nice if the Calendar view could use different colors for the zones being watered. I only have one enabled schedule, a Flex Daily schedule with 5 zones. I have to click on all of the calendar entries for the last several days to see which zones were watered.

#4

Look at the moisture table instead (tap see more detail). It is one big water balance sheet. It’ll show water inputs and outputs in the past and forecasted into the future. That graph is pretty but isn’t isn’t terribly useful. That table below the graph under see more detail is gold.

https://support.rachio.com/en_us/what-are-moisture-levels-(flexible-daily-schedules)-SJ19DUJYw

Note when you empty you kind of reset everything and it won’t water until the next day. Only empty or fill as a last resort.