I don’t quite agree. Rachio does say that the following 20min watering will rise the soil moisture, as you can see in the graph below. But then the day comes and it doesnt, so it waters for 20min again. For the past days that graph has been saying that the following day, after watering for 20min, the moisture will go up, but when the time comes it remains at 0%.
Yes, Rachio says that the soil moisture on May 18 will increase. That is based on the 3.1cm of watering that it calculates will happen on May 18. But you have changed the duration to 20 minutes so when the schedule runs it only generates 0.1cm of water so it never gets the 2.54cm that it calculates. Take a look tomorrow and see if that is what happens. I bet that tomorrow it will show 0.1cm of watering and the graph will show an increase for May 19. Rachio doesn’t water 20 minutes because the soil moisture level doesn’t increase. Rachio waters 20 minutes because that is what you instructed it to do when you changed the duration.
But the duration has always been 20minutes and it calculates the moisture rise based on a 20 minute watering that will happen. When I first created the schedule Rachio calculated 3 minutes which isn’t nearly enough and I immediately changed it to 20. It has always been set to 20 as a base duration.
No it is not calculating the soil moisture rise on the 20 minute watering. It is calculating the soil moisture increase based on the zone settings. Based on those settings it is forecasting that when the schedule next runs it will water 3.1cm. When Rachio calculates the forecast it doesn’t “know” that you have modified the duration of the schedule in a way that will only water 0.1cm. The calculation for the forecast is based only on the zone settings and not on the duration of zone in the schedule. That’s why it isn’t a good idea to modify the duration.
You can test this by changing the duration - set it for 60 minutes. The forecast will continue to project 3.1cm of water.
That seems to be true, but much as I’ve fooled around with Flex Daily, I didn’t think it would be. I figured if you reset the time, and Rachio knows the Nozzle Inches per Hour it would change the amount of water on the chart, but it doesn’t. As you say.
I found the only way I could get my Flex Daily schedule to properly calculate the zone’s time was to DELETE the zone and Save, then ADD back in the zone, and Save.
Wish there was some indication of what Rachio calculates for time when you change it manually. Or maybe a modification to the original could be shown.
1 Like
There is no way that 20 minutes of watering would provide only 0.1 cm of water. That would be a flow rate of 0.3 cm / hour or 0.12" per hour. At some point, Rachio must have come up with the 0.1 cm and 2 minutes, and when manually changed to 20 minutes, as Alturia says, the amount of water provided didn’t change.
At this point, I’m thinking either creating a new Schedule, or one-by-one, removing each zone from the Schedule, Save, add it back in, and Save, in order to force new times.
I think that @rraisley is correct. I would suggest that you delete the schedules, set your system to point again at a US City and PWS, create the Flex Daily schedule(s) and while creating it, set the duration for 20 mins and Save before resetting back to Madrid.
The other thing to do is the run the zone for 5 minutes and Nate the quantity of water used from your water meter. You then need to calculate the nozzle inches / cm per hour from this.
So the formula for mm/hr flow rate will be Total Litres Flow / Minutes run / Area in m2 x 60:
One of my zones 346.5m2 used 0.836m3 in 5 minutes - so 836 litres / 5 min / 346.5 m2 x 60 = 28,95, so 2.895cm
And is the root depth correct ? 31cm seems very long.
I will try this and report back. The root depth, I guessed it as there is a huge maple tree in that zone, surroundes by grass. When you say “save”, what do you mean? Is there a “save settings” optiom somewhere? I haven’t seen it. Thanks!
Won’t that lock in the 20 minutes again, preventing it from updating or calculating a correct time from the zone’s settings>
When you have multiple crops in the same area, like your maple tree and grass, you need to set the root depth to the shallower item, in this case the grass. Otherwise, the grass will die out in how weather. Shallow depth = watering more often, so the grass does fine. The tree will draw off moisture too, so adding more moisture at the tree itself is great but not always possible. You may just need to water the zone a bit more to handle the tree.
Probably not as many as I was making out. There is on Advanced settings.
The problem I certainly have is that my system would not , under any circumstances, automatically calculate the watering needed. I was on to support and they basically said in the end that they could do nothing as the system was not in the US or Canada and would therefore not work correctly, but were unable to confirm as to what exactly would or wouldn’t happen. At the time, we deleted the whole thing and recreated it.
So I just water for 10 mins at a time, and the system waters now about every 3 or 4 days
So when you create a new schedule (using what kind of schedule, now, I’m losing track), Rachio has to put a time in for each zone. But you’re saying that the time in the zone has nothing to do with your zone’s variables?
Such a shame after all you’ve been through on this. Well, I think we were told that Flex Daily didn’t work outside the U.S. & Canada, but still.
While I don’t think Flex Daily could work, would your idea of telling the system you’re in a location within the U.S. work with Flex Monthly? But still, even though climate may be similar, rainfall certainly wouldn’t be.
Sorry, don’t get me wrong, I’m using Flex Daily. It varies the watering of zones, based on the settings of each zone, and based on the weather, and I have to say that it is working better than expected. Our Jan to Mar usage was down by about 70% and this translates to maybe about $1000 of a saving. I would expect our Mar to May reading to be taken any day now, with the bill in about 3 weeks time (around 8 June).
During Flex Daily setup, if I left my system as Mojacar, Spain, it calculated each zone as Zero minutes
To be honest, I’m more than happy to leave things as they are right now. The grass is green. We bought a simple meter probe from Amazon and the meter moisture level is getting close to what the Rachio says. So temperatures are in the mid 20’s C and we are watering “lots of sun” zones about every third day
@Spanish-garden I’ve deleted my schedules and re-created them again. I first tried to create a Flex-Daily schedule using Mojacar, Spain as my address. It would not calculate any timings for each zone - so each zone said 0m and the overall total was 0m too. I could manually hit the + and therefore set each zone for maybe 10 mins.
I deleted the schedule, changed my location to a street in San Antonio, TX and selected a local PWS, and created my schedule. It created most zones with 13m, one for 12m and one for 18m (which made sense - these were two zones where the water quantity was actually measured). I left the zones with their calculated timings. I then reset my location back to Mojacar, Spain.
So I’ll leave this like this for a while and see how it works out.
@rraisley will Flex Daily try and water to 100% each cycle, and will it potentially dynamically change the duration of this watering ?
Flex Daily usually does not change the duration or amount watered at one time. It only varies the frequency of watering, depending on rain & irrigation received and ET used.
But that information (ET) is based on local weather, so I don’t know how it will work in Spain.
Ok, so there is little or no difference between me setting the number of minutes of watering per zone manually vs the system automatically calculating it. Ok, so I was using 10 mins watering per zone and it calculated 13 mins. But the main thing is that it works off our PWS. And therefore, that 13 mins will last varying number of days, based on the local weather (and of course the season).
Did someone say that? If the system has has the minutes, it has calculated the value using all the inputs. A manual setting can be anything, completely different than what is required.
[/quote]
Ok, so I was using 10 mins watering per zone and it calculated 13 mins. But the main thing is that it works off our PWS. And therefore, that 13 mins will last varying number of days, based on the local weather (and of course the season).
[/quote]
If Rachio calculates 13 minutes, and you change it to 10 minutes, Rachio will still think it put the same amount of water down (which takes 13 minutes to do), and will space that water amount out and calculate when to water accordingly.
Hi,
Reading your attempts to make flex work I was thiunking I give it a try and create a daily flex schedules for the zones. Followed the same procedure as describved above: deleting schedules, changing location to US/CND. select PWS, create schedules, change back location instaaled site, select weather.
Schedules were calculated and it looked if thing worked. Last weekend a lot of rain, and I noticed schedules changing and the soil moisture increased to 110% for each zone. Sun was shining again, temperatures increasing and I saw the zone moisture levels going down again and coming to 0%. this night the zones were activated again
I notice some strange things which I’m not sure if these are correct;
- looking to the calender I notice only this month/ next weeks are showing shedules will run almost every day. Last days of the month and the following months are empty.
- zones show a moisture level of 0% after the zone has run. The zone moisture balance is giving a figure which is much higher (78-99%). To me this looks if rain is increasing soil moisture while the schedules not increase the soil moisture levels.
Anyone an idea if this coudl be correct? and why soil moisture is not increased by sprinkler ?
So, you’re outside North America, but are using Flex Daily linked to a U.S. city, but a local PWS for rain? I was thinking that didn’t work out well for those who tried it. My concern with Flex Daily are the great swings in ET (Crop Evapotranspiration) due to local temperature variations, which are not going to be the same as yours. For example, your graph shows a big jump on 6/10 to 0.38 which means an extremely high temperature, yet that same thing will probably not happen at your location. I can see Flex Monthly working well this way, as it uses average, historic temperatures, but am concerned with Flex Daily.
I can see from your irrigation values (0.38") and ETs (0.11 to 0.38) that there will probably be times where it does water every day. It makes me question the irrigation values as possibly being too low. What are your Advanced settings?
What do you mean by “Last days of the month and the following months are empty.”? Rachio only predicts up to 2 weeks ahead, so how do you know what following months will end up like?
I can’t tell what date the 0 percent was for, but assume it’s for 6/8, and it did last water 6/7, and is going to water at 10:39 pm 6/8. So, for 6/8, Rachio assumes it has used the ET value (going from the previous 0.29 (78%) down to 0.00 (0%), which would be correct, before it irrigated at 10:39 pm. I do question the irrigation at 10:39 pm; I assume you have End Before Sunrise or a time selected, and it’s a long watering? It really isn’t best to water at night, but there can be specific conditions that require it.
Bottom line: The graph looks about right and seems to be working okay, but I highly question using another location thousands of miles away for your Flex Daily schedule, and I wouldn’t mind checking your Advanced settings to confirm the watering amount.
Thanks for your response
Indeed the system is installed in Europe. Actually I was just looking for a confortable way run the zones run with a seasonal shift, depending on rain (including forecast) and beein able to control the system by smartphone instead of walking to the controller. Previously I used a standard rainbird controller which I had to adjust manuallly every week, and sprinklers running while I saw dark rain clouds coming nearby. Coming back from holiday (last years we had extreme hot/dry summer) I found back the desert in my garden.
For creating the schedules I’ve used a location in canada for which climate conditions are similair.
Last evening (8/6), this morning (9/6) the system run some zones and for 3 out of 4 I saw the soil moisture increasing form 0% to 20%,
For each zone I used default advanced setup except area (m2) and the nozzle (cm/hr). The screenshot below come from the same zone. This zone has 3 rainbird 5000 sprinklers using standard nozzle nr 5 (I think is is) at 3,5 bar. 2 are doing do half a circle, 1 is doing 1/4 circle
Do you suggest flex monthly would be a less worse solution as flex daily ?
If you are actually using weather for a location thousands of miles away, I think Flex Daily can be very inaccurate. You know how during the same period of time, temperatures and weather can vary greatly, and Flex Daily will try to accommodate conditions that do not exist in your location With Flex Monthly, settings only change every month, so if average weather is similar in each location, it would I think be better. I do think that using the unit outside the US/CDN may continue to be problematic.