I am trying to understand what the schedule is doing, it makes no sense to me. The app is reporting at my zones (except one) are over 100% soil moisture, yet it’s still planning on watering virtually every day for the next two weeks. I had to cancel the scheduled run for early this morning so I wouldn’t be watering during the downpour that rolled through.
With the rain we’ve gotten over the past two days, the lawn should be good for a week, yet Rachio doesn’t seem to think so.
You need to look at the moisture graphs to understand. Chances are, with the way you have your zones set up, the evapotranspiration and crop coefficient (used to calculate rate of water usage of vegetation) is high enough that Rachio thinks it needs to water in order to keep above the allowed depletion level. Based on the picture, you have settings of cool season grass, which with higher temps, will require quite a bit of water.
Also, just because you are seeing dots on the calendar, doesn’t mean that every zone is going to run. If there are slight variances in the zones (amount of sun for example), each zone could deplete faster than another, causing different zones to run different days.
If you feel this is 100% inaccurate, you might need to look at your settings and confirm everything is correct and try to dial it in.
Crop coefficient is on Dynamic, 82% for June. Allowed depletion is 50%.
If Rachio thinks that 110% soil moisture will evaporate to <50% over the course of one afternoon with thundershowers, there is some serious miscalculation going on.
Click a zone, click the moisture percentage to see the graph, then click the more details button to get the water journal balance sheet and post a screenshot. Will explain what is going on with the zone and observed moisture for previous days and forecasted moisture based on your weather station.
My local station changes dramatically depending on the weather even though it’s a half mile. We’ve been getting cooked here in 7b losing ~.2"/day and cool season lawn can only hold ~.56 or so at 110% with my root depth setting and soil type.
The flex daily schedule updated, and now seems wrong in the other direction. Currently at 74% today (the 24th), and forecast to be 28% tomorrow (25th). But no watering is scheduled for another three days after that (28th). I don’t have any watering day restrictions set up, and the threshold is set to 50%. So why is it waiting so long to water??
It looks like you had some days with rain and little evaporation, gonna be decent evaporation today, and hot tomorrow with a .24 evap. I can’t see the 28th, but I would imagine it would fire off the 27th if there isn’t more rain coming 27th or 28th forecasted.
I see you’re using WI PLUS or were. I haven’t heard good results about that setting reading around here. I would suggest looking up on weatherunderground station map to see if there is one closer to your actual controller location that gets reliable precipitation and temp updates. I’m very fortunate to be close to one. I checked by putting a tuna can out and measuring some rain events and it was close enough for me to be comfortable with.
I suggest taking a look at this article that explains the two different percentages one being the moisture level and the other being allowed depletion which gets confused. What are moisture levels? (Flexible Daily Schedules)
It clicked for another use in a different thread a few days ago if you check the end of this one some good info: First day - #22 by ady624
The percentages you are seeing at the bottom of the chart reflect a 0-100% (technically 110%) scale, zero being your allowed depletion level, and 100% being the field capacity of the soil type selected. That figure doesn’t represent ACTUAL soil moisture.
