Flex Schedule Duration Changes?

I thought, according the Flex Schedule FAQ, that flex durations remained constant and only the frequency changed, based on moisture levels.

Just this morning, I noticed that my flex schedule ran for a rather abbreviated run (1h21, instead of 3h42)

It’s also scheduled to run abbreviated this coming Tuesday at 3h3

Has something changed as part of the upcoming v2.6? If so, I think it’s pretty nice

Is it only running 1 of many zones in the flex?

Flex better not alter run times, that is a farce of irrigation.

No, at first I thought it was just running fewer zones, as I’ve seen it do that often.

In this case, I had all zones run but at much shorter durations; for instance, one 18m zone ran for 2m and two others ran for 8m each.

Do the zone moisture graphs give you any indication as to what’s going on?

Not sure what you mean?

The zone that ran 2 minutes had a higher moisture content before the watering than the two zones that ran for 8 minutes

When they were both done, they were at approximately 50% moisture content

This is correct, unless you have restrictions. The system will determine if it needs to top off the bucket to make it to the next allowable watering day. This functionality has been the same since flex software release last year.

I wanted to make sure the flex system was working correctly in your instance, and noted you do have it set to only water on even days. In that case, sometimes flex might want to top of your zone buckets. I looked up your zone run and that’s indeed what it did. Flex knew it would bottom out tomorrow (which is an odd day), so it topped off your zones today :wink:

Here is some metadata regarding the zone run I retrieved from our audit logs.

Watering 0.02 in. because we will need to water on 2016-05-23 based on the forecast and the next possible watering date is 2016-05-24.

:cheers:

Though, it didn’t top off the zones, right? The moisture level was still in the middle and not at field capacity?

Something else I am wondering - the moisture level seems to be able to drop below the allowed depletion level but Iro doesn’t seem to consider this. For example, my Front Lawn Left Side is estimated to start at 0.05" tomorrow but with a net loss of 0.11", it would be at -0.06 (relative to allowed depletion level). Yet, the following day, it starts at 0.0"?

Why is that the case?

if you look at the zone (Front Lawn Left Side) that only added 0.02", it will finish today at 0.05". Tomorrow there is supposed to be a net loss of 0.11" which would bring it below my allowed depletion level

There are other variables at play that go into the equation. Looking deeper into the data there was a forecast of .06in of precipitation (effectiveRain) which would have further offset watering we would have decided to apply.

WaterEntry=WaterEntry(date=2016-05-22T11:00:00.000Z, evapotranspiration=0.09, cropEvapotranspiration=0.08, irrigationEvents=, effectiveRain=0.06, soilMoistureLevelAtStartOfDay=0.12, temperatureMin=48, temperatureMax=62, depletion=0.86, stationId=null, exposure=1.0, cropCoefficient=0.9, depthOfWater=0.17)

That’s all the time I have for research. If there are restrictions on flex watering days it will make decisions that might not be as optimal as a schedule that allowed it to water on any days.

:cheers: