I HATE Hydrawise and zone question

Hi All,

I had Rachio with 6 zones but had an upgrade on irrigation to 18 zones. B/C of this my installer asked to move me to Hunter Hydrawise. Stated it was very good and also had smart watering. Let me tell you it is horrible. Their algorithms dont even come close to Rachio. IT could pour today but it would still water tomorrow “because it will be very hot this upcoming week so we water now to prevent drying”. None of it made sense. I spent countless hours on the phone with tech support who could not sort it out. DEFINITELY DO NOT CHANGE IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING IT.

Now Im planning on combining some zones to get down to 16 for my new 2nd gen Rachio. The question is are there better zones to combine vs others? For example combine a drip zone with a rotary nozzle zone? Combine 2 pop up mist zones? Any better way of doing this?

TIA and Im so excited to be getting back to Rachio

@nehsmit - welcome back to Rachio. Two things to consider - water pressure when running two zones and different characteristics for the zones (amount of sun, slope, plant type).

If there is enough water pressure to run any two zones, then I’d combine zones that are most similar regarding what will impact Rachio Flex calculations - assuming the plan is to run Flex and not a Fixed schedule.

I’d also place misters and emitters on a separate schedule so the Smart Cycle will work, as Smart Cycle won’t run if there are any misters or emitters on a schedule.

If there is not enough water pressure to run rotor zone, I might combine misters or emitters as they would have similar run times. Where as a rotor zone would probably not have as long of a run time as a mister or emitter zone.

I agree with your review of Hunters wifi controller. Unfortunately, you won’t find any honest reviews of this product if you do a Google search. I have a friend who let a contractor install Hunters wifi controller. She hated it and insisted her contractor install a Rachio. She is very pleased now. Hunter bought the Australian company Hydrawise because they were unable to develop something on their own after two years of product engineering. Of the three major manufacturers (Toro, Hunter and Rain Bird), Rain Bird developed a pretty good product; however. It is nowhere near the accuracy of Rachio.