I thought I noticed this a couple of times before since I installed my Rachio last fall, however today was egregious.
The soil moisture level was at 100% yesterday when I checked it in the late afternoon, I woke up early this morning and the streets were soaked with puddles everywhere and I had a Rachio notification that it was had scheduled a run this morning. I disabled the zone so it wouldn’t run.
I just turned the zone back on and its saying soil moisture is at 0% which is clearly not the case as the streets are still wet outside, hours later. What is going on here? I’ve also seen the soil moisture level drop drastically before from like 110% to 20% within hours (and its not a hot day).
This is super concerning to me…
Can you post a screen shot of your zone moisture chart and advanced zone settings? Does the moisture chart show any precipitation amounts? Are you using a local weather station or the Weather Intelligence+? If the latter, suggest changing to a local reliable weather station (if there is one) and looking at the moisture chart again.
Thanks. Settings look reasonable for turf. Your moisture chart does show forecasted precipitation that keeps the zone watered until May 5th (where it appears Flex will water or there’s a precipitation event that I Can’t see on the chart since it goes only to May 4th in the screenshot). Or perhaps you skipped those waterings. The chart also shows you’re using Weather Intelligence+. Do you have a local weather station available on Rachio that shows precipitation you received last night? If so, I recommend switching to it. Direct local weather measurements will always be better than WI+'s interpolation. WI+ is great for those that have no local weather stations.
Thanks so much for the reply and suggestions!
So are you saying to go into Weather Network and select to get data from a single weather station? (Mine shows 8 stations less than a mile from me).
Definitely! That;'s a lot of stations! You very likely don’t need to use WI+. One of the stations will likely be a good fit for your location (and hopefully reliable; check directly with the weather provider or tap More Info for details to judge the weather station yourself). If you switch, its measured values will immediately show up on the moisture chart for the past 3 days and for today – look at the precipitation row. AS of now, WI+ says you got 0.01" total yesterday and is expecting 0.03" today and 0.01" tomorrow (if I’m reading the right row correctly; row labels are missing from your screen cap). See how that changes when you select a station closest to you that looks the most reliable.
I just changed it and BAM, just like that - soil moisture is at 110%.
I can’t thank you enough for your time and knowledge. I had just stupidly assumed that the Weather Network would just take a bunch of data near me and be more accurate.
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That’s awesome changing to a local weather station now matches your empirical observations. Glad you smartly caught the inconsistency. Happy to help!
1 Like
That’s awesome changing to a local weather station now matches your empirical observations. Glad you smartly caught the inconsistency. Happy to help!