Odd Zone...not sure how to set up

[Kubisuro]

Sounds like there’s more available water than the default Available Water Content setting for sandy soil (0.05). You can trial increasing the AWC under advanced zone settings. Maybe try 0.10. That’s a big change. May take a few watering cycles to find a reasonable AWC for your unique soil. Root depth setting change may be necessary but sounds like you already know for sure what that setting should be.

Compaction does make things challenging since NRCS AWC values will only be a starting point. There could also be a hard pan layer under your top soil, which would restrict infiltration of water and keep water at the top of the soil.

You can try the NRCS web soil survey to see if they have a better value for AWC. See this post for instructions:

Using Web Soil Survey to define your soil settings

I found through my own experience that setting an incorrect soil type can have a dramatic impact on the watering duration and frequency of flex schedules. I’d lived in my home for 22 years and always assumed we had a lot of clay in our desert soil. Through these forums I found that was not the case, and instead we have sandy loam. Changing that setting really had a big impact on my scheduling. Finding out your soil type can be confusing, but I personally found the USDA Web Soil Survey site t…