Just got my unit in yesterday and everything is connected and setup. I chose “Flex Monthly” as it was what showed up as “recommended.” I pretty much set everything up as “Recommended” because I want to give the ML a chance to kick butt. The resulting schedule is quite interesting with very sporadic total watering. It is supposed to rain next week, so the long duration between the next watering makes sense.
My question is that does this schedule seem normal? This watering period seems VERY long and infrequent (maybe that’s the ML in action?). What do I do if my grass seems to do poorly with this schedule? Also, it it somewhat weird that the Street Side Grass (smaller chunk and stationary heads vs rotary heads) is such a short duration? Everything is set on soak cycle (as suggested).
Also, we bought the house in February and the “South Side Lawn” seems like it has been underwater in the past. The house is newer (under two years) and the sod still shows the “lines” in it. The default in the settings shows 9" roots but I doubt they are that well established. Should I mess with some of those settings for that zone?
Flex Monthly will have “set” watering frequency each month, that increases with frequency as average temperatures get warmer. It doesn’t react that well to dynamic temperatures as every month has a set watering frequency (i.e. every 5 days).
The system will try to do deeper, less frequent waterings, hence the longer watering with less frequency. This article explains some other concepts of the schedule.
The article above explains how to adjust Flex Monthly frequency. If you do increase frequency I would just lower minutes a bit. Also, you might want to try one or more zones in a Flex Daily schedule to see how that performs. You can also reach back out to the community as we have a few power users that like helping people get their systems tuned up. This article explains the Flex Daily concepts.
Are you sure that value wasn’t changed? The engineering team simulated that zone in the same schedule and got 33 minutes? I would try recreating the schedule.
I feel like “Supposed” to be is relative I did notice that your grass type that was chosen was warm season grass and just noticed that you are in Montana. If your grass goes largely dormant for the winter (which I assume it does) you should have cool season grass which will very much change the frequency. Try that and you will see a large change in frequency.
Your disabled zones are marked cool season grass, so it does look like your active zones were changed to warm season grass?
I did notice that your grass type that was chosen was warm season grass and just noticed that you are in Montana. If your grass goes largely dormant for the winter (which I assume it does) you should have cool season grass which will very much change the frequency. Try that and you will see a large change in frequency.