Four different watering schedule requirements, can Rachio do this

Schedules & Zones Fixed Schedules
1

I’m about to replace my good old Hunter controller with a wifi system. Before I do I am trying to find out if the Rachio will support the following schedules individually. There are four totally different watering schedules, some need several short watering cycles daily while others only need 1-4.

Schedule A - Lawn, 10 zones that run once a week for deep watering. However when I renovate the lawn next year, they will have to be adjusted to run 4 times daily to germinate new seed.

Schedule B - Garden, 1 zone. Daily watering for 45 minutes in the morning.

Schedule C - Garden, same zone as schedule B. Several quick bursts at night to scare the rabbits away. Of all the deterrents we have tried, nothing works better than a surprise spray of water to make a rabbit run for the hills.

Schedue D - Trex deck 1 zone. Multiple short waterings during the afternoon. Usually this will be disabled, the exception being when people are spending time on the deck. Trex is super hot and we just need to water the main walkway to cool the Trex for foot traffic.

With my hunter, I am able to accomplish this to a certain degree. The 4 individual schedules work fine, but I am limited to 4 watering cycles per day for each schedule. Schedule A and B works for fine, the max cycles per day would be 4 when I reseed my lawn for germination.

Schedule C and D does work, but only 4 cycles available. Ideally 10-16 one minute cycles at night for the garden and mid afternoon for the deck would be great.

I’m hoping that with all of the technological advances in the last 15 years this would be possible.

Thanks!

2

Yes, you can do all your schedules. The only possible problem is that if you need to water your lawn at the same time as you want to scare the rabbits, that would be a problem as you can’t water two zones at the same time. But it would be only the one night.

For schedule A, you could have a fixed schedule once a week, or you could look into Flex Daily, watering just when it needs it since you have already trained your grass to deep waterings. Then I would use 4 fixed schedules for the overseeding, putting a start and end date on them. There are ways that you could also accomplish the overseeding method using a manual cycle and soak, but I think that might get in the way of the needs of your other schedules. (Plus I just find the fixed schedules for the overseeding easier as I can use all of them the first week, cut one out the next week, and then cut another one out the next week/)