You mentioned that you do not follow the world of wired flow meters and have now discontinued the wireless flow meter that was being sold by Rachio and which I chose to integrate into my system last year. How then is flow rate calculated and without a flow meter wired or wireless how does the controller know when the low flow and high flow set points are hit. Can each zone be calibrated and high/low flow limits set for automatic shutoff without some sort of physical flow meter? Thanks in advance for a reply…
For flow rate without meters we estimate based on zone size and nozzle rate. We do not have high/low settings or shutoff without a wireless/wired flow meter.
Ewing still has a couple of the Wireless Flow Meters in stock.
I grabbed myself one because I want more accurate measuring of my water consumption per zone. I think they probably had some manufacturing issues with it, which is why it was discontinued.
Stops Leaks. If a high-flow leak is identified, Rachio removes the affected zone from the queue, continuing the rest of the schedule as usual.
@Franz, I’m assuming this is only effective for a failed sprinkler head, pipe, etc., after the valve as the only way Rachio could shut off a zone would be to not hold the valve open (energizing the solenoid) for that zone. Still, that would be beneficial in nearly all cases. How long does Rachio anticipate continuing support for the Wireless Flow Sensor?
Was it just that too many users were having issues getting it installed or working? I can understand not wanting to be in the business of giving people plumbing support.
Install friction probably the biggest (underground, so many piping variations and combinations, cutting pipe, probably need a pro, not really DIY, total addressable market), no knock on the meter, that is stuff is just hard, overall margin, and support costs (one call could wipe out margins, and its not a simple product). Also, hardware in general is difficult and is compounded when all the headwinds listed.
I would recommend installing a master valve after your backflow allowing the system to be shut off remotely if a valve were to stick. I think if you can’t get a rachio wireless flow sensor install a compatible wired one. There are several sold by third party manufactures.
That’s sort-of the current plan but I’m calling it Plan B because I really really don’t like the cost of it. The flow-sensor only route is Plan A because it costs less and it’s beginning to look like I could buy a nice home in another state for what it will cost to get my landscape watering to fail safe-ish.
If I’m reading the data correctly, once calibrated to the wireless sensor the Rachio Gen3 will skip a “leaking zone” during normal operation. That’s good.
I don’t see anything about Rachio Gen2 calibrating a wired sensor nor any indication it will do that at zone-level with a wired sensor. If it will calibrate and skip a leaking zone with a wired sensor, great! If I have a spare wire. Well, maybe great. Then the only issue is backflow. If the Gen2 will calibrate a wired flow sensor before the backflow (I have backflow valves), then I’ve covered > 99% of my probable issues. @Franz, can you chime-in here?
To the best of my knowledge, Gen 2 will perform similar leak detection to gen 3 when used with a wired flow meters. I do not have one setup as such, but when going through the process of adding a flow sensor to a Gen 2 controller, similar calibration prompts show up as if Gen 3 was used.
Setting up flow sensor before or after the back-flow presenter does not, by itself, effect the readings. Reason why wireless flow meter was designed to be installed downstream of the back-flow presenter is that it makes certification process easier, since the device does not have to be certified for potable (drinking) water. If you don’t tend to loose city water pressure, there is little reason to worry.
My concern is the lack of absolutes. The now-discontinued setup of a Wireless Flow Sensor calibrated each zone and said comparisons between calibrated values and measured ones were used to ensure “good zones” were not skipped when a leak was noted. It failed to state categorically that a leaking zone would be skipped, but inferentially the statement was adequate.
Your statement stands in contrast to what I saw here in the Help Center. There is nothing about zones being skipped or not skipped, nor about calibration, only about absolute gallons being measured.
This may work in some circumstances, but where the user is away from the property and has multiple zones the only options left to them are to allow all zones to keep running or to shut off all zones—thus risking or killing their landscape.
On the other hand, if your assertions are correct, I might be home free on the zone-level control providing I can find the needed wire pair without having to physically wire the sensor (which would be quite difficult as it is on the far side of multiple large concrete expanses).
Hence the questions: Will the Gen2 with a wired flow sensor calibrate zones? If a wired sensor is used on a Gen2, will the Gen2 shut off (bypass) only the leaking zone and allow the others to run?
When I mentioned that similar calibration prompts appear with a gen 2 controller, I was talking about the system attempting to calibrate each individual zone. I cannot complete calibration, as I do not have a wired flow meter connected, but the prompts are identical to Gen 3 controller where I can control automatic shutdown on per zone basis:
Hey everyone. I’d like to clarify that the Rachio Wireless Flow Meters were announced as end of sale last fall. Meters being sold on everydropmeters.com are not associated with Rachio. However, we are compatible with the 1004-EX & 1104-EX models.
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