In my area of northern AL, Huntsville, where we have a mountain range that runs between east and west, we get REGULAR instances where an area close gets a downpour, but 1/4 mile away we get nothing. This happened yesterday. It came a deluge all around us, but the mountains deflect them from my property. The forecast also says we will get rain today and tomorrow. Using the 'smart weather intelligence" it cancels the watering that it had planned a day ago and moves it out - but my yard is getting no rain, and now it gets no irrigation either.
is there a way to say “i got no rain you dummy!”? I know I can go in and manually run the zones, but then it thinks it got rain AND irrigation, and then puts the planned scedule out even father - just exasperating the issue and pushing out the schedule.
I had a rain sensor from my previous system, and originally had it hooked up. But all I could see that it did was actually stop the system if it was running and it started to rain. It’s not a rain-measuring device, so can’t feed data into the system.
There used to be a weather station just around the road from us that I used as the guidance for my system. But it went offline last year and I had to go back to the “multi-sourcing” solution (which is not very good for my area since there aren’t many close to me).
It’s not skipping planned waterings, it is literally replanning before it ever gets to the point of skipping. As of this morning, because of the forecast, I have NO waterings planned for the next two weeks!! Yesterday the plan was for 3 zones to run today, and another two to run tomorrow. I’ve had about 4 tenths of an inch of rain in 2 weeks, and my lawn can’t go anymore without water. Yesterday afternoon there were “pop up” showers all around. We got one - and got one tenth of an inch from it. Not enough to get more than the surface of the ground wet, and much of that ends up evaporating. It certainly doesn’t get down to the roots of the grass. The forecast is for high chances of rain the next several days, but those chances usually equate to the reality I said above - rain all around, but never at my property. And even the forecasted amounts don’t ever equal to more than a couple of tenths per day. Sure, IF I got those, it would be fine, but it is a high likelihood I will NOT get those. Attached is my current plan from Rachio - The green watering is a fixed zone I have set for plants on a berm.
At a very basic level it needs to build its plan based on the rain ACTUALLY received - not a forecast of rain that might come. For anyone who watches the local weather because they need rain (farmers, gardeners, lawn lovers), we know the forecast is a crap shoot that is rarely right, hyper locally, for rainfall. The next fix is how to feed it ACCURATE rainfall for a property. I now have to make my sprinkler run because I NEED water on the lawn. But as I said above, that will feed into any algorithm that also thinks I’m getting rain. That will just mess up future irrigation forecasting. For that one, I suggest Rachio sell a simple weather station package to tie into the system. I have a weather station, but not one that can feed into weather database that Rachio draws from. And those kind of weather stations cost way too much - in my opinion.
I believe the only solution for actual rainfall is to get a PWS. Rachio integrates with Tempest and that will give you what you need, actual rain in your yard. Forecasting is a separate and totally different issue though.
I have similar issues with predictions. I have my own weather station that reports to PWS & WeatherUnderground. I think there should be options for rain skip. Default could be received & predicted like it is now with another choice of using only actually received. Saving some water is better than losing a lawn. If only received rain was used, I think I could go back to Flex Daily and let it calculate soil moisture and adjust the watering duration to add only the water needed instead of running the full amount of time as inputted into a fixed schedule.
My threshold is set to 0.5 inches. I’ve actually received like 0.1 inches with a prediction of 0.4 or more that we don’t get and Rachio doesn’t water because that matched or exceeded the threshold.
For this reason, I had to change from Flex Daily to fixed but fixed sometimes doesn’t water because of the prediction that doesn’t come true.
And I’m not sure where predictions come from when one has a weather station. Is it still the conglomeration of stations and algorithms?
hmmm…this indicates that even with a PWS there is a problem. I think IF you have a default weather station selected (your own or one close by) vs the mesh of weather stations, you should have the option to have it build your irrigation upcoming plan based ONLY on rain received. Coupled with that could be smarts such that if your system is watering, and it starts raining (which your selected weather station will report), the system will stop.
I should add that this lack of rain, and no plan to irrigate, is usually coupled with 90+ degree weather days that feel like 100 or more. My fescue lawn can’t handle that double whammy. I’ve got to keep consistent water on it during this oppressive days that go on and on.
I am working with the product team on potential solutions to forecasted data and the impact to schedules. I have some ideas that could take care of this issue.
Weatherflow Tempest is the one that works directly with Rachio (I think there is a $30 integration fee if you buy it from anywhere other than rachio.com), but you can also use any PWS you want if it pushes data to Weather Underground. Ecowitt makes a few, Davis, etc. Make sure they publish to WU and you can use it in Rachio. Again, this fixes actual rainfall, forecasted is a different issue.
I have an Ambient Weather WS-2902 weather station that works with Rachio and is budget friendly. You connect the WS-2902 to Weather Underground (wunderground.com). Then you tell the Rachio app to use your weather station on the Weather Underground. I’ve used this system for over four years and it had worked well for me. Ambient Weather has several models of weather stations. I picked the WS-2902 because of the price and it worked for other Rachio users.
Another Florida user here. I have the same problem with the predicted rain. Florida summer thunderstorms can be raining on one side of the street and dry on the other side. I would like an option to only look at actual rainfall from my local weather station and not factor in the predicted rain.
You might consider a Weatherflow Tempest home weather station that provides actual rainfall amounts localized to your home. It connects directly to Rachio, allowing R to compute saturation levels, etc., to fine-tune your watering. This combination works very well for me.
Same use case here in Utah. We are running 100+ degree days and yet the subtle mention of .01 inches of precipitation kicks all planned waterings down the road each day. I’m lucky I noticed the tree leaves yellowing so I could manually water.
Hoping the solutions allow for something that takes into account actual precipitation, automated preferred but even a manual notification prompting a question from the app to confirm would be better than nothing.
