Rachio Maintenance and Water Skip

Hello,

I have three questions, that I thought I would combine in to one thread:

  1. It recently rained heavily here and the temperature is starting to drop in preparation of winter. Please add an override feature to force the lines open, so I can use my compressor to blow the lines out. It would be much easier than manually turning the valves.

  2. It has been three years since I seen a feature request for water skip for homes that feature well pumps. This has not been added or addressed, and frankly is unacceptable.

  3. I would like to see a firmware update/rollback option

Rachio, please listen to your community. Overall, you have an excellent product, even though the hardware is a little flimsier than I would like. You have a chance to make it even better by adding these simple feature requests.

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Hey @jbroady-

Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback. I want to make sure I address all of your points.

  1. I agree this function would be helpful for winterization! This is an experience our team is looking into improving. Do you open every valve simultaneously or individually when winterizing?
  2. We are aware of the request to add well pump delay to the software, and it is in our product roadmap. While I cannot give any dates on feature additions, I can assure you we take our customer requests incredibly seriously.
  3. Can I ask why you would like a firmware updater/roolback option? We automatically update firmware currently. I would be curious about the desire to rollback firmware, as it’s often an important (if not necessary) update.

McKynzee :rachio:

  1. I open one valve at a time, as I have a small compressor. Commercial companies with large compressors would do all at once. Both options should be made available.

  2. Well pump delay would be higher on my bucket list, but line item 1 is a close second.

  3. Rolling back firmware would be helpful if a controller had a corrupted image. Just a fall-back option for upgrades, which is always good. Firmware has been steady, and I would rate this a distant third on my request list.

Good product overall, and with some feature enhancements, would be great!

Thanks!

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As part of my commercial energy reduction business we install network capable network communicating HVAC thermostats similar to Rachio Iro2. Same concept for the tstats: control and scheduling via Internet.

Rachio will have to move to firmware updates at user control if it wants to make a significant penetration to commercial markets. No (few) commercial or municipal properties will allow a manufacturer to sight unseen automatically load a firmware update.

Rachio wants to insist that its customer base is always using one version of firmware - this minimizes support costs. But it requires customers to accept automatic firmware updates without having opportunity to delay it to first understand what it’s for.

My guess is for the residential market no opportunity to intercept a firmware update is no big deal. This changes substantially so in the commercial market. After Rachio gets some things done, and then decides the commercial market is attractive, they’ll have to fix this.