I think I am a bit confused about allowed depletion and flex schedule. I have read some of the previous comments so I understand that Soil moisture at 0% corresponds to the allowed depletion. Not a worry on that one. I did have a zone that was at 0% soil moisture and thus expected that flex daily would run at least that zone. At present, that zone and all of the other grass zone are not set to run until 7/18. To try to see if i could force the issue I emptied all of the zones so they are now all at 0% and the flex daily still has the next watering on 7/18. Something seems off.
@ck2_nd I see what happened with your calendar. You have an every six hours “end by” schedule that allows for a watering of 5 hours and 40 minutes max in between. So when more than 4 zones out of six on a flex daily need to run with cycle soak, that schedule will never be able to find a window to water and keep going back in time (since it is an end by schedule and so is the hourly schedule). Since there were skips on 6th, that opened up a window for schedule run intended for 18th to water, since that run had 5 zones it wasn’t able to run at any later window due to long duration. It would have never ran if there wasn’t a skip. Runs prior to 18th were shorter and were able to stack at later dates. After that run executed the system assumed you have already done all of the watering for the schedule intended for 18th and will only attempt to add runs after that date to prevent double watering. Since flex daily is very dynamic, I would create 2 new shorter flex daily schedules that will be able to always fit in the small window between the hourly runs. Current flex daily schedule will need to be deleted unfortunately.
So If I understand correctly, take the current schedule that spans 6 zones and break it up into two flex schedules, one that may be front yard and one that is back yard. (4 zones and 2 zones). Each schedule would have a shorter duration and could thus run.
Should I have seen this somewhere in the set up? Also as a product enhancement for flex days should it be able to prioritize the zones and only run the higher priority zones that will fit into the max time.
Thank you for the info, so far I have loved the Rachio controller. Will let you know how things work out over the next week.
Yes, this would help, but ideally in a compact scenario like this I would change both to a “start after” schedule. This way they can always stack forward. Backward stacking doesn’t guarantee time availability. Having an hourly end by schedule prevents hourly schedule to move forward when needed, so it has to hop over backwards sometimes to the past where it can no longer run. Those are ideal when there isn’t a potential overlap.
Unfortunately it is not visible because of unpredictable (due to weather and different zone characteristics) nature of flex daily.
We currently do not have a priority, just order. Flex Daily is strict and must water all zones that are depleted. It doesn’t know which zone is more important if both are at zero. Most cases this isn’t an issue, but there are definitely cases where perfect solution isn’t possible.
Just set up the new schedules and things look better, back yard running tonight and front yard tomorrow. They are off for a week, I would assume due to forecast weather, then pick up alternating days from there. Also I believe that the six hour limit came from a garden schedule that runs every 6 hours.
One thing after reviewing your moisture graph, looks like you have chosen warm season grass and I noticed you were in CO. This has a default of 9 inches for root zone depth which won’t water as frequent as what I’ve typically seen in CO. Cool season grass has a 6 inch root zone depth which will water more frequently but less watering duration. Just a heads up, didn’t know if you purposely chose that crop type.
