So this morning my Rachio 3 used “Freeze Skip” on my Flex Daily, odd day only, before sunrise, schedule. Basically the temperature was 30-31 degrees between midnight and sunrise. GREAT FEATURE! However my soil moisture depletion is at 0 now and the next scheduled watering is 48 hours from because of my “odd day only” rules related to where I live.
Suggestion:
Prior to skipping the run I had the option to click “Run” and force it to water. Obviously I didn’t do that. However I would LOVE the ability to manually get it to preform the scheduled irrigation at a later time, shortly after sunrise its already well over 40 degrees and safe to water but my only option is to design a custom run because once the skip has passed the Rachio only plans for the next entire allowed to water day.
While I certainly can “guesstimate” what it planned to do had it not skipped it would be so nice to get the planned custom run (with times appropriate to each zone, run off protection etc.) to still be available for later use at the click of a button. As it stands I basically had to create a manual run of 15 minutes a zone, let it run, then do it again to approximate what it would have done. Close enough but more work than needed AND not as accurate (although I know the next watering will flex to adjust.) Basically on freeze or wind skipped days give us a button throughout the day that forces it to water based on what the flexed schedule would have done had it not skipped but at our command.
Very interesting suggestion and understand the use case. A little similar to wind skip. Conceptually I think it would be hard to figure out when the user would like it to run “next” or even if they would like that built in. I’ll make sure the product team gets this suggestion.
thanks. to be clear i think it would be something as simple as when a skip occurs the app tells you why AND what would have been done. then in the same dialogue there is a button that says “do it now”. if you don’t press the button, no big deal, the next day etc. the system just adjusts the next watering like it does now and life goes on, but basically this gives the advanced users (who tend to be a good % of your user base i’d assume) the option to not only force a run BEFORE the skip is due to occur, but also manually AFTER it has already occurred (but on the same day.)
basically because i had “before sunrise” set i lost a watering day to temperature and it would have been easier just to see that at 9 am when it was 40 degrees and just hit a button that says “do it now.”
Not sure if that makes sense to me. I have a daily flex schedule so even now a skip will be compensated for on a future day automatically. my bigger issue is I have an odd/even restriction so if I have a skip I will have a minimum of 4 days between waterings. I’m actually suggesting leaving the logic as is but putting something in the UI that shows a skip occured to allow me manually to click a button and start the skipped event when I want. This way most of the time if I have no concerns about the skip it will just be compensated for during the next watering but if I am concerned that the skip caused me an issue I have a simple way to force it to run. Obviously I can create a manual event but I’d like the logic that drove the “plan” for the skipped to remain present so I get the proper amount of irrigation in the right order to prevent runoff etc. thanks!
A good problem to try and solve, but doable with logic or user interactions. I suppose you can’t deal with all ‘What If Scenarios’, but some logic from the freeze skip to a temperature rise within a window to sunrise if there is one would help to override a new setting for the schedule being days out. The question is does the SW constantly monitor the temp or wind to then go back and change what it previously set for the future to then change it? User interactions would be good, but also some pre-settings to override may help also… just some thoughts.
