When setting up my flex schedules, should I group all of my like zones together (rotors and misters) or should each zone have it’s own flex schedule?
I have 6 zones and some zones are much larger than others.
Thanks,
I’d probably group by like zones, especially for cycle/soak. If using cycle/soak best to have zones with similar watering durations. If you have wild variations in watering time (i.e. tree 3 hours, grass 30 minutes) there will just be too many cycles.
I’d also start with maybe a zone or two just to see how they system behaves and that could help dial-in other zones.
This FAQ might be able to answer some high level questions.
http://support.rachio.com/article/382-flex-schedule-faq
Hope this helps.
Would it be correct to say, separate flex schedules would only need to be created only if you would like certain zones to run at different parts of the day, say morning vs evening? Because each zone is independent from every other zone you just need a water window that is large enough to handle the max total run time that could possible run. Different parameters for different zones might cause daily schedules per zone to not always match other zones. Is this correct Franz? (I understand there might be other situations in which you want different flex schedules)
How are overlapping run times handled if watering from one schedule ends after the start time of another schedule? I think this could be a big issue if you do not know the max potential water window.
Yes, exactly. Each one is a unique entity. The only time you really need to create multiple flex schedules is start times like you mentioned, or to make sure you don’t have excessive cycling times if a flex schedule has some drip or mist zones.
They just run sequentially.