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Quick Run = 110% Soil Moisture and 1.30 in?

Schedules & Zones Manual Run
#1

I did a manual quick run of each of my zones (6 total) for 3 min. each (a total of 18 min. of watering time) last night to make some quick adjustments to where my sprinklers were hitting. Prior to this quick run, my soil moisture for all 6 zones were in the teens and scheduled to run my flex daily schedule this morning. I woke up this morning and saw that there was not a notification on my phone that the system ran. I then checked some of the data on the app and it shows that in the 18 min. of run time last night that I did that somehow I received 1.30 in" on moisture. How on earth is that possible?

Has anyone else experienced something similar to this? There was no rain last night in the area, so not sure what is going on.

#2

Not knowing what your zone settings are, I can’t say for sure…but what about this behavior are you questioning? 1.3" in 3 minutes of run time seems high, but I suspect that you must have a VERY high PR set up in your zones.

#3

What I’m questioning is why is my soil moisture showing maxed out and now skipping my next scheduled watering? I haven’t touched any of my spray head settings in over a year. My rotar heads are set at 1.25". My fixed spray heads are set at 2.25". There’s no way that a quick run of 3 min. could bring a zone up from 15% all the way up to 110%. I use the quick run setting periodically throughout the season to ensure everything is functioning as expected (since all 6 of my zones begin running at around 3:00AM and end before sunrise when I awake) since I’m not actively awake when the run as scheduled.

Never before has any of these quick runs maxed out my soil moisture, so I have no clue as to why a 3 min. run would show 1.30" of water per zone and force skip my normal run in the morning.

#4

Are your fixed spray heads actually putting 2.25” of water?

#5

No. I adjusted early on to decrease watering. I think it was around 1.75" as default. I don’t recall.

#6

Can you post a screenshot of the advanced zone settings? Maybe even the soil moisture chart if there’s one for one of the zones.

#7

Here’s the screenshots. You can see in the 2nd screenshot that my quick run wasn’t even picked up. I do now notice that it is showing there was 1.3” of rain on the 13th and 14th according to the PWS I’m tied to. That is very odd. There was no rain here at all.

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#8

I just looked at the PWS that is .29 miles from my house and they show 1.30” of rain on both the 13th and 14th. There was no rain here.

#9

Seems like you hit 110% from the reported rain precipitation, because the manual run didn’t occur until after that.

If your saying the PWS is reporting rain, but you had none at your location you may have to look into another PWS or get one of your own. It can be possible that rain occurred at the PWS and not your location.

Back to the initial I don’t think the few mins of manual run time jumped you to 110%, it’s the rain that did

#10

I agree. It was definitely the rain reported at the PWS down the street. It’s definitely a glitch because we had no rain here. The other PWS .15 miles away from that one reported 0”. Not sure what happened with the station I was linked to. All the more reason for me to pull the trigger and place my order for the Tempest Weather Station!

#11

I’ve seen some differences with some of my local weather stations, although one major issue is the one I’m using appears to stop reporting data during certain times. I’m thinking about setting up my own too.

#12

I think you can fix the incorrectly reported rain by “emptying” the zones. That forces the water level to zero.

#13

Yeah, that’s what I did. I emptied it last night that way it would pick back up on my normal schedule this morning.

#14

Are you thinking about getting a Tempest or another station?

#15

I have no clue, I don’t have much knowledge as to what’s good or not or what’s better. Seems like a decent amount of members here are going with the Tempest. I may just get fed up and get one.

#16

Michael, do yourself a favor and cancel your flex schedule. They don’t work and quite frankly, when weather stations start controlling your watering, your asking for frustration. Set your schedule for an odd/ even schedule and water like you always have. If you don’t need water, you’ll get a cancellation notice. I tried flex scheduling and on the surface it sounded perfect. Bottom line, my system just kept moving my water days and never running. I contacted Rachio and learned that the technology is not perfect. In the fixed schedule your system will run every scheduled day unless you’ve got wet soil and the water isn’t needed. My system is supporting be running righ now but we had drain last night and rain showers today. The System cancelled tonight’s run. It works so much better than flex and will adjust your zone times as needed. Good luck

#17

@Phillyfann I beg to differ. I’ve successfully been running Flex Daily schedules on multiple controllers for over 5 years.

@MichaelS76 there does seem to be a glitch somewhere that has popped up in the last month or so, as I have noticed a similar issue with the timing of identical zones in a schedule. I have a post from yesterday as well, which I found after ending my testing of the adaptive watering feature, and putting all my zones back to “normal”. For whatever reason, some of the zones are off a bit, one is WAY off like you mention, trying to run for nearly 5 hours, when it should be 3 and change.

#18

Luckily I realized the error and emptied my soil moisture in order to get my schedule back on track. I’ve also switched the local PWS I was tied to. Luckily for me, there are two within .29 miles from my home. Hopefully this other one is a little more reliable than the first one.

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