I tried to setup Fixed Schedule for watering on two primary days of the week (deep watering), and combine it with a Flex Daily to make sure that in the rest of the week, the grass still has enough water to make it to next Fixed Schedule day. But I soon realized that they do not work well together. Flex Daily soil moisture graph did not include any of the Fixed Schedule future watering. And one night I had same zone watered over capacity by both Fixed Schedule and later Flex Daily.
I wonder if Flex Daily (or new scheduling strategy) could have a feature to schedule deep watering grass up to field capacity on select days (e.g. 2 days of the week), and on other days it would water only if soil moisture goes below 0% and enough to make it to next deep watering day.
I haven’t thought through this in details. For example, what happens if there is rain in the forecast. I think for the deep watering days, the schedule can subtract forecasted rain till next deep watering day from reaching field capacity and only apply that much water.
Is there an interest from others for this type of schedule? And is this a schedule that could be implemented simply with current stack?
If you expand Irrigation (+) line on the Soil Moisture graph, you should see that Flex and “Other schedule type” are both tracked together and separately and equally contribute to the moisture totals.
I cannot comment about two schedules overlapping and over-watering. Mine are scheduled for different times with at least 1 hour between them.
Past. I’ve missed your the part specifying “future watering” in your original question.
How do you have your schedule(s) setup? Fixed first, than flex or visa versa?
I setup Fixed Schedule to start 1 hour before Flex Schedule, but because of the overlap, I think Flex did not pick up the zones that were not watered yet when it started.
And if I exclude the two days in Flex daily, then Flex will preempt watering day before Fixed Schedule because it doesn’t include it in its logic.
I would even be happy with a schedule that would just top off to field capacity on watering days, and account for any non-watering days in between that could cause soil moisture to exceed field capacity. But a bonus option would also allow watering just enough on non primary watering days to avoid going under Allowed Depletion in case forecast causes more losses.
I don’t think it is recommended running a zone on a flex daily schedule in conjunction with another schedule as it will cancel out the flex daily schedule
I personally would not mix the two together. It defeats the purpose of Flex Daily. I would either spend a little time getting Flex Daily tuned in for your yard, or else just go with a fixed schedule.
I am not currently mixing the two together. I’ve tried it and it failed. In any case, even if Flex Daily was getting future irrigation from other schedules, it will still not do what I am trying to achieve.
I have also toyed with having Flex Daily water only on two days of the week, and it fails miserably. For example, I am including a graph of what it would do if I switch to watering on Wednesday. Flex Daily will water overnight and the soil moisture would reach 133% by morning, and then ET would deplete it to 100%. I guess that’s why Flex Daily is recommended with at least 4 days of watering in the week.
And the problem with Fixed Schedule on its own is that it waters more than necessary with limited skips such as Rain or Saturation skip.
Why can’t there be a way to water twice a week and take into consideration soil moisture and forecast?
@moisture - did you by any chance have a PWS near by I notice on your screen shot you are you using WI plus in my opinion flex daily doesn’t behave well using WI plus since it’s getting data from a whole bunch of weather stations
I use a PWS nearby. The graph is similar to the WI+.
In any case, the logic should be the same regardless. Rachio usually puts down 0.36in of water for this zone, and that brings the soil moisture from Allowed Depletion to Field Capacity (or 100%). For tomorrow, it would reduce it to 0.27in. So the logic seems to make sure the end of day moisture level does not exceed 100%. Even if it reached 133% when it waters at night. This works fine if the schedule is supposed to water most days of the week, because it would have waited another day before it waters, unless tomorrow was not a watering day. I find that Flex Daily logic works best when it can water any day. A lot of places have water restrictions. I think there should be a better way than legacy fixed schedule. I looked at the API and there doesn’t seem to be a way to extract the soil moisture graph with forecast. I would have given it a try myself to implement watering based on two primary days of the week. I would have loved to see how the grass reacts and worth the trouble.
I understand what you are trying to achieve Here in my case flex daily has been working really well I don’t have water restrictions I Just have it set for any day as need it
