I just installed my Rachio 3 yesterday, set it up as flex monthly. All sprinklers are rotary nozzles. Mostly warm-season grass, a flower bed, and a tree, all flat to a slight slope. The recommended watering time was over 12 hours! Did I do something wrong? Seems excessive. On average it wanted to run 1:36 per zone excerpt the flower bed (drip line), 1:25 and the tree (live oak, bubbler) 1:10, and the drip line in the parkway between the sidewalk and street at 2:06. Seems long. Any help is much appreciated.
Total watering time will depend on the number of zones that are watering, as well as the type of soil, grass, etc. Could you post a bit more information? How many typical zones, and what the properties for the typical zone are?
Sure. 8 Zones. Six agree Bermuda grass, 1 is a flower bed that is currently Holly. This will be planted soon with drought tolerant perennials. The others lon a 3 year old live oak. I went with the recommended clay loam soil. The area used to agriculture field. I haven’t had the soil tested yet, but it’s not as much clay as other areas of north Texas.
If the live oak is on its own zone, and the zone is set to tree, that’d be a long run that might be fine for a mature tree but not a young one. I think the Rachio’s default tree root depth is 24”. You can likely safely adjust down to 12” for a young tree. Check your advanced zone settings (link below) and see what the root depths are and if they make sense. You can change them without changing the zone type label. You may also consider doing a catch cup test for the rotary sprinklers and adjust nozzle in/hr in advanced settings. If your zones are mixed plant types it becomes nearly impossible to make all plants happy. You’ll have to choose which you want to be happiest and set the zone to that plant’s needs or split the difference.
Advanced zones settings:
https://support.rachio.com/what-are-advanced-zone-settings-Byh9v81Fv
Catch cup test:
https://support.rachio.com/en_us/how-do-i-perform-a-catch-cup-test-BJi9vLkYD
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