Flex Daily - watering @ the wrong time?

Schedules & Zones
#1

Hi all- recently added a Rachio and moved over to flex daily over the weekend. Thus far, things seem to be working fine with one exception.

When I first setup flex daily, it recommended that I don’t use the “water before sunrise” feature as I already had that feature activated on one of my existing (disabled) schedules. I set it to water after sunset and later deleted my old schedules.

I then modified it “water before sunrise (recommended)” but my schedules are all still running at 8pm. This causes an issue as I water my pastures (different controller) in the evening and it causes pressure drops due to well pump capacity.

Any idea why it is not watering prior to sunrise as requested? I emailed Rachio but they just sent me generic links to how flex daily works.

#2

Have you checked your total watering time (including any soak periods)? The system may have to start as early as 8 PM the previous day to finish by then. What is your schedule’s total run time?

A fault (IMHO) of End By times is that they actually determine a starting time based on the TOTAL of all run times subtracted from the End time. Usually, all zones do not run on the same day. Meaning they end way before Sunrise, in your case, and start earlier than they need to. I’ve gone to starting at 5 AM, when all zones run the same day, it can take to around 11 AM, but usually ends much earlier.