New User & Sod - Question about Fixed Schedule & Cycle Soak

Hi all,

I’m a new user to Rachio and actually a first time user of an irrigation system. I live in New England and am looking to understand the best way to efficiently water new sod I just had laid down. I set up my 2 zones as follows:

Grass - Cool Season
Slight Slope
Sandy Loam
Rotary Heads

I created a fixed schedule that runs Mon - Friday and selected “ends before sunrise” and selected the “smart cycle” option. Rachio recommended that the total watering time is 8 minutes (4 minutes for zone 1 and 4 minutes for zone 2). To me, this number seems way too small, however, I am unsure if this reflects the total watering time for the day or only a single cycle as the time I selected is set to “ends before sunrise.” Would this imply that the system will run for 8 minutes multiples times until sunrise and if how many times would that even entail?

I’ve read as a generic rule of thumb that you should water new sod twice per day at 20 minute intervals. However, if this smart system can intelligently decide what is best to run for new sod (and given the current weather conditions) then I’d like to do that. I’d like to not micromanage this new sod and let Rachio do the thinking for me. Any advice in terms of creating schedules or how to approach this would be appreciated. Thank you!

Flex daily is telling you that each zone would run for 4 minutes per day ending before sunrise. You could set the root depth and increase watering. Or if you know you want to run this twice daily for 20 minute intervals, I might do that using a fixed schedule for a few weeks and know that your sod will be taken care of.

1 Like

Yeah use two fixed daily schedules: one set for the morning, one set for the afternoon, with all weather intelligence turned off. Follow the guidelines based on the sod installer/seller advice or rules of thumb. There’s no new sod mode; that’s up to you. Once the sod is rooted (established), then consider researching the use of Flex.