Looking at my schedule set up when I installed the Rachio in December, the system ran every 10 days for December and January. Seems Ok since the grass should be dormant. In February this changed to every 3 days with a couple skips for rain. March and April are also scheduled to run every 3 days. Then in May through August, the schedule is every other day. It goes back to every 3 days in September.
Every other day seems excessive. Total run time is 4 hours 56 minutes for a 6 zone system - all calculated by Rachio. I have St Augustine in 5 zones and flower beds in 1 zone. in the grass zones I have Generic rotary nozzle chosen for Hunter MP nozzles that put out 0.4in/hour. I measured the areas of each zone the best I could and put the info in each zone. Does that matter? All grass zones set to sandy loam, lots of sun, and slight slope. Advanced settings are:
Area - measured and entered
Available water 0.12in/in
Root depth 6 inches
Allowed depletion 50%
Efficiency 80%
Crop Coefficient 65%
Nozzle 0.4 in/hour
I think these values are all defaults except for the area and nozzle output.
I live in central Florida if that matters.
Some of the past run times were reduced to 3 hours and 18 minutes (not the 4 hours and 56 minutes in the schedule). I assume this is Rachio cutting back on the time and will continue to do so as needed. But why is it scheduling every other day in May through August? If the system runs that often I’ll use more water than I did last year when I was using a Hunter X2 Wand. My goal was to use less water and more efficiently.
Is the schedule just a “guess” and it will either water or not or run for a lesser duration dependent on the weather at the time?
My bill cycles mid month and I can’t get a first day of the month to last day of the month usage stated on the bill. But Rachio is saying I used 8,804 gallons and had 12,135 scheduled for February so far having run 5 times out of the 7 scheduled times to date.