Gen2 - I have 12 zones and if I use flexible day scheduling would it water all zones in one day which means it may keep watering well into the hottest part of the day. I assume, with flexible scheduling we don’t have control on which zone to run on which day and so basically it is upto the system to determine when to run the watering. I don’t have any restrictions on the day I can water in my area.
Hi @vkazhipu so no. If you have all 12 zones in the same schedule, not every zone will run. Each zone is treated individually based off it’s moisture balance and will water when the Rachio thinks that the zone will reach it’s Allowed Depletion level (the bottom part of the moisture graph).
Ideally, you are better off breaking up your zones into different schedules based off the plant type. So I have 5 zones, but 3 schedules. I have a grass schedule, a front yard schedule, and a back yard schedule.
Are there different plant types in your zones?
If all your zones were exactly identical, then they could end up watering all on the same day. But if you are like most of us, some of your zones may have a little shade and/or lots of shade. That will break them up so that they will end up on different days. I have three zones that will basically end up watering every other day, two zones that water every third day, and one zone that doesn’t even make it once a week. And then my drips run even differently.
Like @Modawg2k, I also have three schedules - mine are broken up into a lawn schedule(starts at 3:30am and skips Friday since that’s when the mowers come), a drip schedule (since drip can’t mix in with the lawn or it won’t smart cycle), and a flower schedule (since it’s a spray, I make sure it runs around 8am, and the drips can start later in the morning).
Thanks for inputs. I am going to install rachio tomorrow. And want to be informed before that.
I have only grass. Mostly similar sprinkler and shade factors. May be 1 or 2 zones has different shade factor.
So if understand correctly, even with flexible scheduling, we can have different schedules. So probably I can 2 schedules with front and back yard and skip the mowing day for both schedules? That is what I do with my current sprinkler. I water back and front lawn alternate days and skipping 1 day of the week which is mowing day.
So do you think have 2 schedules (Front, back yard) within flexible scheduling suit my needs? My only worry is whether the watering goes late into the day when it is hot outside even if I start watering early in the morning.
I think rachio don’t have a setting to say that watering should not got beyong a particular time in a day.
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You are correct that Rachio does not currently have a feature to stop watering by a certain time.
Before we get into how to offset the waterings, let me ask you, have you done all the setup on your zones with respect to the settings.
No. I just got the system. Planning to set it up tomorrow.
Awesome. You’ll definitely want to check out this post by @azdavidr to help you get all your settings dialed correctly to help you succeed with flex daily.
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