I have drip irrigation set up for my vegetable garden. I have a flex daily schedule set up for its zone and the zone type is set to garden with emitters as the spray heads.
I’ve had the zone set to run 45 minutes, which translates to an irrigation amount of 0.24" in the soil moisture table.
I’ve noticed that the soil moisture balance drops well below 50%, often close to or equal to zero, unless there’s also been rain adding to the irrigation amounts.
This morning I changed the duration from 45 minutes to 1 hour run time. Strangely, yesterday morning’s irrigation amount changed from 0.24" to 0.18" (makes no sense). Additionally, the planned irrigation amounts for the next two mornings were unchanged, both showing 0.24", regardless of duration, as did the amount from four days ago.
I can’t understand why the irrigation amount seems limited to 0.24", regardless of duration, especially as that amount regularly leaves the moisture balance below 50% (my allowed depletion). If the soil isn’t saturated shouldn’t the irrigation amount increase with duration?
First of all, when you look at the soil moisture graph, you aren’t seeing ACTUAL soil moisture percentages. You are seeing range percentage from 0% (the current allowed depletion level, default is 50%) to 100% (actually 110% max, which is the field capacity of the soil type). If we were looking at these values as actual moisture levels, 100% would be a lake.
When you make time changes in the schedule without actually adjusting zone parameters you are basically telling Rachio that you feel you need more or less time to actually put down the .24" of water per cycle that it has calculated it needed.
So you have spray heads in your garden? Do you know what the precipitation rate is of those spray heads? Flex Daily works best if you spend a little time dialing in the zone settings. There is such a wide variety of irrigation products on the market with wildly different specifications, and Rachio deaults for the most part seems to be able in the middle of all of the options out there. Without dialing it in, you could be perfect, you could be overwatering, or you could be underwatering…
