I’ve had a Rachio 2 for quite a few years now (and now also a Rachio 3 at a rental) and I’ve raised concerns with support in the past about the way interval updates work. According to the team, these updates are based on “many years” of local weather data, which they suggest makes the interval logic effective and data-driven.
I have to disagree. Long-term historical averages are valuable for establishing baselines, but they shouldn’t outweigh current conditions. Here in North Texas, it’s still in the low to mid-90s every day with full sun, and yet on October 1st my system pushed my watering schedule out to once every seven days. Weekly watering in 90-plus degree heat simply isn’t practical for keeping a lawn alive.
It seems far more logical for interval changes to adapt primarily to real-time weather patterns, with historical data serving as context rather than the driver. I realize that may require more weather intelligence built into the product and additional development costs, but it doesn’t seem like an insurmountable hurdle for a system marketed as “smart.”
I’d welcome feedback from the product team: why aren’t interval changes based on actual, current weather data? Or is the official advice to water a sun-baked, 93-degree Texas lawn only once a week?
Yes, I can manually adjust the schedule, but that defeats the very reason I invested in a smart system in the first place.
I’m in your neck of the woods, so I’m wondering why you aren’t using Flex Daily scheduling to control your irrigation. You do need access to some decent local weather data (I happen to have a Tempest integrated to my Rachio), but that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Then, after setup, you let the controller handle all the watering. If you’re already using Flex Daily, those occasional notices are for your fixed or monthly (historical) schedules. I’ve rarely (except that winter of ‘21 and a couple hell-hot watering restrictions) had to care much what my irrigation controller decides to do.
Good suggestion. I hadn’t used that previously but spent a few minutes configuring it. I already use a local PWS, so I assumed that would take priority. I also used GenAI to help modify the advanced settings per zone, since even after moving to Flex Daily the intervals were identical, just assigned to different zones on different days, which felt like the same horse in a different color.
After adjusting each zone’s advanced parameters, including the soil moisture level, my watering schedule shifted to better match actual conditions. Now I’m curious to see how it adapts based on my local PWS. Unfortunately, no one at Rachio support ever walked me through that during past calls.
Like @JBTexas said, that is basically where Flex Daily comes in.
I have no idea how GenAI is helping you modify your advanced settings, or if they are accurate, but flex daily will adjust daily to weather changes as they affect the moisture level of the soil. IMHO, precip rate, soil, and crop coefficient (the default settings for each plant type are pretty accurate) are the most important to get right. From there, root depth can be a pretty big lever of frequency as well.
I used ChatGPT to help me understand the advanced irrigation settings, which were new to me. I described the environmental characteristics of my lawn, including sun exposure, two types of grass, and the contrast between areas with newer grass in full sun versus shaded zones with no runoff. Using default settings didn’t seem appropriate given these differences. Once I had outlined all the relevant details, I asked ChatGPT to prompt me for anything I might have missed. It then helped me fine-tune the configuration. For example:
Setting
Recommended
Why
Available Water
0.17 in/in
Clay loam stores a bit more water than sandy soil.
Root Depth
6 in
Good average for Zoysia in partial sun.
Allowed Depletion
35 %
Keeps the soil from drying out under tree canopy.
Efficiency
70 %
Typical for rotary sprays with decent coverage.
Crop Coefficient
0.65
Less transpiration in partial sun.
Nozzle Rate
0.8–1.0 in/hr
1.5 is too high unless you truly have high-flow fixed sprays. Do a cup test if unsure.
The return seems pretty accurate, at least the “why”. Not knowing much about the details about your yard or irrigation system, it is impossible to validate the recommendations though.
Default settings are exactly that, default. Gotta start somewhere, but it’s almost never accurate to a persons particular yard or irrigation system, which is where Flex can fail. Garbage in, garbage out. You need to invest a bit of time understanding your yard and irrigation system to dial in the settings specific to your yard.
As for the ChatGPT recommendations…give them a try. The only setting that I usually don’t mess with is the Allowed Depletion. I’ve always left at the standard 50%, but it is easy to change if it isn’t working. Setting it to 35% is just going to make the system run a fair bit more frequently.
I disagree on some of the GenAI (LLM model) recommendation.
Available water. It is better to change the soil type setting which will choose a default value for this. This will then apply the right cycle/soak auto setting. Also, it is best to do a soil texture test, through a lab ideally (not those NPK cheap ones.), or a jar test if you know what you are doing. Soil texture can vary, it can vary enough that yours may be different from your neighbor or your backyard is different that your front.
Root Depth. Not sure how partial sun affects this. Watering habits and grass type can. Best way to know is to use a soil probe tool, take couple random samples and see where the depth is at.
Allowed Depletion. GenAI is telling you that because you are in partial sun and under a tree canopy, to water more. Definitely AI hallucination. Better off to leave it at 50% unless you have a good reason to adjust it (Like lower values for compaction issues or higher values for water logging issues).
Crop Coefficient is the one you want to mess with for partial sun. Probably an easy bet would be to use the default setting under the Exposure setting (like Some Shade, Lots of Shade, etc). It will auto adjust this setting based on what you pick.
Nozzle Rate. 1.5 being too high is not true. Rainbird HE-VAN is higher than that, so is Hunters Pro HE, and K Rain KVF. All High efficiency. The only nozzle that come to mind that is 0.8 is Hunter’s MP800s. Many nozzles have a spec that you can go off of but you can really know with a cup test (I have done cup test on many of them and many modernish mainstream nozzles do in fact get quite close to their advertised spec but that depends on system design).
