Hi,
I have left my flex schedules on this winter to see how it works. The last several days the temps have been dropping into the high 20s at night. Last night my front lawns ran and iced everything up pretty bad. The night before my front planters ran and it froze that night as well.
We have been getting frost warnings for our area from the NWS so I am not sure why the Rachio is still deciding to water.
@cwagz, do you know if you’re using a PWS or NWS as your preferred weather station? The Iro should skip watering anytime the temperature is at or below freezing. I’m curious if your preferred weather station might be reporting inaccurate data.
I am using the NWS. KF70 is the station.
Maybe you guys can consider preventing watering if temps are below like 38F?
@cwagz, sorry, I read your reply too quickly. At this time, Flex schedules do not skip for freezing weather. We need to add this into the logic. Fixed schedules DO skip for freezing weather.
A work around would be to setup a rain delay via IFTTT anytime the temperature hits “x” degrees (i.e. 38 degrees)
Great idea! Will pass this along to the product team for review and consideration.
Hope this helps. Sorry for any confusion.
@emil thank you for the information on flex schedules. I will try the IFTTT route for now. Happy New Year!
Here are the recipes I put in with IFTTT. If these work out I may never need to touch my schedule again!
So far a rain delay has already triggered for tonight as the forecast calls for a low of 34F.
Thank you for making such a great product!
@cwagz, awesome! Glad to hear the IFTTT recipe setup went smoothly for you!
This is the only recipe I’d recommend keeping an eye on as Flex schedules will automatically account for rain when calculating the soil moisture balance on a daily basis. The rain delay will override the Flex Schedule(s); however the Flex Schedule(s) should skip automatically unless the forecasted rainfall is under the required refill amount to meet your Allowed Depletion settings. Just curious, did you need to use this to comply with local watering restrictions.
Perfect! 
@emil
Regarding the 1 day delay for rain. KF70 might report rain a little funny. It has been raining on and off for the last several weeks and it does not seem like KF70 reports it correctly unless it rains a lot. The rain only shows in the 1 hour column. I am not sure if this effects the way your software tracks it but often the rain seems to go unrecorded by the flex schedules. I figured the 1 day delay would help with this. I notice other NWS stations log rain in the 6 hour column as well. Is KF70 not tracking accumulated rain? The other stations nearby are all coastal so they really won’t work for my location.
It is against the rules here in CA for me to water if there has been any rainfall. I think I get a pass for having a weather based controller but I don’t want to get turned in.
Just an FYI, this change has been implemented and released to our software cloud.
Here is an example:
@franz This is great! Does it look at the current temp at the time of checking, or forecasted overnight low?
Current temperature (one hour before the scheduled run). If it is at or below freezing the flex schedule will be skipped automatically.
My controller wasn’t scheduled to water this morning but the Schedule update shows that the schedule was skipped due to freezing. Should the schedule log say that the schedule was skipped if no watering was planned?
Ah good point. Will have the development team only issue this event if the schedule is supposed to run.
