Is it possible to have Schedules that alternate between Zone Groups?

Schedules & Zones
1

Hello! I’m new to Rachio but not new to lawn care. From what I’ve learned on the internet and YouTube, these are the boxes that we need checked off for proper lawn care:

  1. Water right before sunrise, or as close to sunrise as possible to prevent fungus growth in the roots.
  2. Water deep, 1 inch.
  3. Do not water daily. Depending on temperature, water just once a week or a bit more if it gets really hot.

Using my old dumb controller, my schedule was this:

  1. Divided yard up into 3 Zone Groups.
  2. Depending on temperature, any time under 90 deg F, water only 1x per week. Anytime it was going to be 90+, water 2x per week. I would manually check weather and adjust accordingly each week.
  3. Instead of watering all 10 zones on the same day, which would mean I’d have to start at around 2am, I would water different zone groups on different days. This enabled me to start my watering schedule only 1 to 1.5hrs before sunrise.

Depending on the week, I would water 3x or 6x per week. But, the important factor is that I never ran all 10 zones on the same day. That would require a ~4.5hr watering time and force me to start watering in middle of the night. But, splitting the 10 zones into 3 Zone Groups and scheduling each group on a different day, I was able to optimize my watering schedule.

Is it possible to do this on the Rachio? I would love to be able to have something like this again, but automated.

2

Try using a different flex daily schedule for each of your zone groups. set each flex schedule to run on different days - e.g… Zone group 1 runs monday, thursday, zone group 2 runs tuesday, friday, zone group 3 runs wed, sat. This will allow you to water each zone up to twice a week, and Rachio should decide when to water each zone.

In flex daily, each zone will run if rachio determines that the zone will run dry before the next scheduled run, so only some zones from the group may water on any given day.

Look at each zone on the zone page to check water level and next expected run date (which may change due to weather).

The end at sunrise setting assumes that all zones in the schedule will water, so it might start earlier than you want, if only a few zones water.

1 Like
3

Darn!

Only one schedule per device can end before sunrise or end before a specific time.