Rachio High Flow Alerts

In my past two runs I have received two high flow alerts (I don’t have mine configured to auto-shutoff) from the wireless flow meter, each one from a different zone. Both were essentially exactly 10-11% over (the alert occurs at 110% as preconfigured). Each was between 0.4 - 0.7 gals per hour more than expected. For now I’ve upped the alert threshold to 115% of each zone to prevent the alerts unless it seems a bigger error / leak. I wonder what a real world popped head or broken pipe would “look” like, would it be a massive use increase?

I personally can’t see anything wrong with the zones and the difference seems quite small. My plan is to recalibrate for a long period of time before the calibration is taken and see if that makes a difference (I used the 1 minute time standard and certain they look up to full pressure by then but who knows?). I calibrated during the day (no water being used in the house) but perhaps I should calibrate at night at a similar time as when these zones typically run? My setup is a 1 inch copper setup with shark bites exactly like the video, it couldn’t be more identical and went very well.

Thoughts? Is 110% of flow rates in my zones that vary from 4-8 gallons an hour too precise a calibration alert window or is something really going on with my irrigation system?

Thanks!

I had alerts on a few zones with 110%, so I changed it to 125% on all of them for now, and no alerts. I will be monitoring it through July as the setup is still new to see how it goes. I will probably start to dial it back just in case we have a leak and wondering what will that 15% will equate to in water loss!! Anyway, will continue to monitor…:):smiley: on the new G3 & Flow…

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Rerun your calibrations using 2 minutes to charge. I used 1 minute initially, but when I did so the lines were already charged because I had previously ran a short schedule.

When my system ran later that day, because the lines weren’t charged, it gave a high usage alert. Since the flow meter does a sampling based on the charge time you used, and since the lines aren’t fully charged yet, you get the high flow alert.

Rerun at 2 minute charge time or longer and your problem will disappear.

Mike

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Make sure you have the correct sprinkler checked and it’s precipitation rate data entered along with the zones efficiency percentage. You may have to double click the empty button more than once as well.
I hope some of that helps.:nerd_face:

Ok, I reran all the zones in calibration using 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. Although visually I couldn’t see a difference in the strength of flow from the sprinkler heads there was a significant difference in the calibrated value. ALL of my 8 zones registered higher flow rates. In all it was an increase of 3.5%, 5%, 6%, 6%, 6%, 7%, 9%, and 9.5%. You can see with these higher values I was in several cases very, very close to the +10% warning margin the system defaults to when nothing was actually wrong at all. With these new higher values I’ve once again lowered my alert values to 110% of calibrated flow and hopefully the problem is resolved.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND when calibrating the Rachio Wireless Flow Meter using more than the default 1 min calibration per zone even if it seems the zone is visually up to pressure in that first minute. Perhaps my system is odd but I’d also encourage Rachio to change the default duration of the calibration to at least 2 minutes per zone to save on folks having these same warnings without perhaps understanding why it is happening and thinking it is actually a serious problem.

Thanks!

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