Every few years, I take another run at getting my Rachio 3 to apply Smart Cycle to my drip system on a steep clay slope. Here goes again:
Here are two schedules. As far as I can tell, they’re identical:
After much trial and error, here are the scheduled irrigations for the same zone using both schedules:
Why does the first schedule ignore Smart Cycling, and the second one uses Smart Cycling?
Here’s the zone settings:
Am I reading your post correctly? It appears you have the same zone trying to run in two schedules concurrently. Or are you saying you disabled “top of slope” & then created “drip on slope”?
The North Slope zone was running on the Drip on Slope schedule. Smart Soak wasn’t kicking in.
It was kicking in on the Top of Slope schedule. So I put North Slope on Top of Slope and presto! Smart Soak.
So why does one work and the other doesn’t?
(I noticed that the watering duration was different on Top of Slope, so manually set it to 2h 35m 16s, same as Drip on Slope. Smart Soak still works.)
And oops - I should have said Smart Cycle - this is for the Rachio 3 controller.
Problem solved.
Rachio support advises that prior to February 2026 Smart Soak and Smart Cycle would not operate on zones configured with drip nozzles, emitters, bubblers, and drip lines.
This restriction was removed in February 2026. However, schedules created before that might not apply Smart Soak or Smart Cycle to those zones.
So if that happens, create a new schedule from scratch and Smart Soak or Smart Cycle should work.
That explains the confusing results I had two years ago (when I was told that the restrictions had been removed, but maybe not) and this month.
Smart Cycle is now working on my zones where it’s needed.
