I have a gen 3 and I run a flex daily schedule, really enjoyed the savings on my water bill. One drawback I have found is that you could experience long periods, months at a time, where a zone is not turned on at all. This is great for savings, but its not great for the maintenance of my system. I would like to add a second schedule that would ensure that all my zones were activated at least once a month for a few minutes, so that the rubber diaphragm in the valves would not dry-out/dry rot due to a long period of none use, but I have found that the limitation in all the schedule options is only for weekly watering, so I can not set up the schedule for a specific day of the month. It would be great if there was a “maintenance” option on the schedule that would do this for me…observing freeze skips.
didn’t know not using the valves could result in damage to the diaphragm, but makes sense. In absence of a way to deal with it via Rachio, all we can do is set up a Reminder or a calendar event to let us know. Or perhaps there is a way-- IFTTT might be able fire off the sprinklers at a certain date? Not elegant but possibly an option to take the human-action element out of the equation.