Make it Simple

[ShaggySS]

Is it just me or does this product seem to over complicate a simple task of water my yard. I wanted a smart irrigation timer that was smart enough to turn off the sprinklers when its raining and maybe water more when it gets hot. While I am sure some people love the advanced settings and being able to set your precip amount and soil type I don’t want to but I still want the benefits. Seems like a smart sprinkler timer should be able to learn about my yard based on feedback from me the user.

It would be great to open the app and choose the condition of that zone.
“Too Wet”
“Perfect”
“Too Dry”

Take that data and my weather data and past water data and adjust my yard based on that simple feedback.

[Sprinklerman]

The Rachio can only learn about your yard based on your feedback. Every yard is a microclimate of it’s own. Ideally, a weather station and effective soil sensor in every irrigation zone around your yard is the best way to determine the landscape needs. And even with those sensors, it still needs to know what/where it’s being watered.

Rachio has created a stop-gap to satisfy most of this. And in the process taught the end user that there is more to watering a lawn than just turning on the water.

[mckynzee]

Hey @ShaggySS

For the time being, I would recommend using a fixed schedule with all of the Weather Intelligence featuers enabled. This should work fine without digging into your settings, and still save you water!

I think your idea of that simple adjusting of a schedule is very interesting. How often would you be willing to give this feedback? How long after setting up your system? I think we would need a couple times of you gives that feedback to start figuring out your setting, which could be a time period of a couple weeks. Would you be ok with it taking that long to get it tuned in?

McKynzee

[ShaggySS]

Currently I am using the fixed daily and modifying the advanced settings to get the watering times in the ball park of what I think I need. I have considered the fixed schedule many times but I feel like I am going to figure this thing out one of these days.

As for giving feedback to a system I would have no problem providing this feedback on a weekly basis for several months. I have been trying to dial in my sprinkler settings for over a year and have yet to master it so what harm would a few weeks do. Seems like after a few weeks\months “Learning Period” I should be able to go in and provide manual feedback if needed. Based on just the info in the “Zone Details” and the weather data the timer should be able to figure out all the advanced info to keep my lawn green from spring to fall.

To simplify it one step further I would even be willing to buy a Bluetooth soil probe that can sync with Rachio so simply going around my yard choosing the zone and sticking it in the soil and the system will adjust automatically.

[mckynzee]

Thank you for that! This is super helpful. I was curious about how much time people would be willing to stick with it to get it right. I think between knowing weather, having general zone settings, and that feedback, it ultimately wouldn’t take all that long to get to the perfect schedule.