Is there a way to tell my Rachio to never run in between certain months & days?
I always have my sprinkler blowouts in early October so I just want my schedules to run until the end of September. The closest option I can find is to set my schedule date to the end of September, but then I have to change the dates every year.
I used to have a RainMachine and I could do this easily.
Is this possible with Rachio?
I put mine in standby mode right after winterization. That is manual, not automatic
Do you know if there is a way to make it automatic?
Not that I know of. I would not want to do that automatic as when I winterize varies.
I don’t winterize my system; I have a company blow out my sprinklers and they come every year without me having to call because I’m on their recurring program.
If Rachio could be setup to automatically go to standby Sept. 30th every year, the risk is that my lawn might not get watered a few more times when it should have.
Without the automatic setting, I risk forgetting to put Rachio into standby and the consequence is that my sprinklers will run again and fill up the pipes. Then I have to call and schedule another blow-out and hope it happens before it freezes hard. Or I might forget altogether and my sprinkler pipes will be full of water and then crack when it freezes hard.
The risk analysis definitely favors an automatic recurring standby.
Furthermore, even if I do set up one schedule to end at say Sep. 30th, another risk is that I forget to create a new schedule in the spring and my lawn doesn’t get watered for a month or two before I notice. This kind of actually happened to me this year because my RainMachine died and I didn’t notice until my grass started to look bad, mainly because my sprinklers are set to run in the morning while I’m sleeping.
It’s a pretty basic setting that’s available on most any “dumb” sprinkler controller, so it’s a bit ridiculous that it’s not available on Rachio. It actually makes me want to replace the Rachio with a dumb system because there’s much less risk of my pipes cracking and having to spend who-knows-how-many thousands of dollars to repair or replace the pipes.
That probably is not a bad idea for some. The other side of the calendar, for me, is that the water also comes in on different days and I want to check out the system before it comes on.
If you have someone coming to winterize and blow out your pipes, I guarantee there is a shutoff valve that they turn off, otherwise, you will still have water in your pipes…at that point, if you forget to put into standby, it will think it runs, but nothing will happen.
You could give permissions to your irrigation company to put your system in standby.
It was also pointed out that when they blow out the system, they SHOULD be turning off the water to the system, and running it will do nothing but activate some solenoids in the valves to your zones. No worries.