I woke to ice from my sprinklers this morning. Now a smart controller like mine would never allow that right? Wrong.
After a few frustrating hours I have concluded this thing is pretty dumb.
First, I am running in the suggested Flex daily mode. Second, I am 7 miles from DFW airport where I get my data.
The first thing is, I went through one hour trying to find the setting “Weather Intelligence.”
It doesn’t exist on my phone app or online. I search all the documentation…why cant I set my temp?
Turns out that a phone chat (on Sunday!) reveals that isn’t an available setting on flex daily. These settings are…drum roll…pre set! To what I don’t know but wait there’s more!
It also turns out that I have my sprinklers set to run after midnight (its Texas). So the controller consults my set weather station one hour before running THE WHOLE SCHEDULE! One time!
So if its 40 degrees at 11:00 and 25 at 4:00 am, your “smart” controller will just keep on watering!
And of course it’s my wife that discovers the ice on the okra…I, in a properly hurt sounding fashion say, “no way, my smart controller would never allow that to happen!” Wife rolls eyes and here i am three hours later typing this.
I think the controller HAS to check the weather more frequently ESPECIALLY during the schedule. And the flex daily has to allow the settings changes to compensate for DFW showing 36 as the low last night and i got ice.
Until that I will just stay up all night and monitor the local temperature, wind, rain etc and turn the controller on and off as it makes sense for the weather…when my wife yells…“come to bed” ill say I cant honey, my controller needs me.
(BTW, my deductive reasoning skills lead me to believe that it would gladly water during rain IF the weather was dry when the controller checked an hour before the schedule started, but I might be wrong)