I’ve seen older posts asking, and replies indicating its a good idea, but it doesn’t seem like the Rachio reports a leak when not running? I have an Everyflow installed and I’ve run 10gallons with all zones off without notification.
I don’t see why this would be hard since the rain meter seems to instantly respond when controller is idle so the S1 and S2 are active when controller is idle.
The Rachio 3 with an Everydrop flowmeter monitors water flows after zones are turned off and will send an email notification warning of a potential leak. That said, the Everydrop is a paddle meter and will not measure low water flows. I pump out of a holding tank and lost 300 gallons one night due to a cracked valve without any notification.
Everydrop is a vortex meter, and does have a minimum flow 0.5-0.9, which isn’t my issue. I had a hose attached wide open and no notification. I’m wondering how much water will be in my yard if any of the 140’ of 1" main line PVC breaks,before I’m notified or notice. 10gallons would have been 100 pulses to the controller if I’m reading the specs correctly.
Because I pump out of a tank and the tank is filled via a float valve, I was getting a notification every cycle until I disabled that feature. You might try a test and see how much water flow causes the leak notification to pop up. It’s hard to guess about how the Rachio algorithms are coded.
I can confirm that the Rachio 3 with an EveryDrop 1004-EX flow meter will only inform you of a leak if it happens within 10 minutes of the last zone shutting off at the end of a normal cycle.
I know this because I had a zone valve body crack a few days ago, the water was running for hours, and I didn’t receive any notification. It wasted over 2,000 gallons of water.
I’ve seen a bunch of mentions for Rachio’s support of flow meters, and how they can detect leaks, but nothing about a time limit. It’s ridiculous - the Rachio is receiving the info from the flow meter, it knows the system isn’t running, what’s so hard about sending an alert?
I recently had a problem with my master valve, and instead of replacing it I just removed it, figuring “Well, I have a flow meter, so I’ll know instantly if there’s a problem”. So much for that idea.
Any water savings that Rachio was going to get me are now out the window, just because for some weird reason, they only monitor for leaks for 10 minutes.
I actually spent more on the flow meter and install than I did for the Rachio. What a waste of time and money.