Rachio flex is not xeroscape desert adapted

I think I have now given up on both WAN and Flex for drip irrigation in the desert. The local watering guide suggests that you need about a 4 hour run time with 2 gal emitters on the drip system, and the flex schedule with xeroscape just won’t let you adjust that high beyond just shy of 2 hours. I really still can’t figure out what WAN is trying to do or what drives it.

It’s a shame because it seems the system has a lot of promise,but not sure why these arbitrary limits on watering. It lets trees go longer, but not xeroscape which by definition often have very long run times.

It appears one way around this is to choose shrubs instead of xeroscape. not sure why, and what else that affects, but then the possible watering times are longer. In the desert shrubs are part of a xeroscape, and have long watering times so Rachio definitions seems to be a little different.

@garmanmd. I have 7.5hr flex durations for my shrubs on 1gph emitters in Phoenix. It sounds like you chose xeriscape but I would think that would only make it such that you had longer intervals. What root depth do you have set?

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@garmanmd. And what is your soil type? That would have am an impact well.

I am also in Phoenix area and used the one with clay in it as I have some caliche. I used the Desert Watering guide for length (published by the Phx area cities).

@garmanmd. Have you checked the Web Soil Survey. Mine and @Modawg2k’s both said Sandy Loam. I started off with the clays as you did and the intervals and durations weren’t what I was used to for out here. Having did that, @Modawg2k ran a mason jar test and it was closer to the clays, so right now I’m not so sure if I will stay with Sandy Loam or make a change. I plan to run my own mason jar test to see where it takes me.