I have a question for this community. The idea of flex daily watering doesn’t seem to align with the idea of slow and low watering. Watering zones for an hour or more (rotor sprinklers) but watering only a few times a week for deeper root growth. Wouldn’t daily watering promote shallow root growth and stressed-out grass that wouldn’t do well in hot conditions? Or is there some Rachio AI magic at play here? I do have really clay soil here in Central Wyoming so watering for long periods of time is a challenge. Even with cycle and soak in my zones it doesn’t take long before that clay gets saturated and I get run off. Does this daily thing actually work?
There is an algorithm at play that will take into account the amount of water that a particular soil type can hold vs. run off, but Rachio will try to water as long and as infrequent as it can for the conditions. For instance, areas with high sand content, water drains right through, so there is no option other than to run more frequently than a good clay loam type soil.
But to answer your question, I’ve been on Rachio for 8 years, and set up, or help set up dozens of other controllers here in Arizona, and yes, it works. You do have to put a little faith in the process, and take the time to CORRECTLY set up your zones, but it works. Other issues that new people run into is the instance where they did water daily for 5 minutes, and expect Rachio to work its magic, run every 2-3 days for 35 minutes (the correct way to water) and expect their grass not to be stressed. In those instances, it can take a bit of retraining of the vegetation to the new, correct watering methods by slowly making adjustments until Rachio is running the way it wants to.
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