I’m new to Rachio, but not new to automated sprinkler controllers.
So currently, as I understand, rain delay is triggered by a combination of actual rainfall and predicted rainfall. I suppose that may work in a lot of places but.
Where I live, predicted rainfall is about 90% inaccurate. I actually live in a rain shadow, so rainfall 2-3 miles away may be significant but I actually get nothing. This happens a LOT. As a result, my system is going into rain delay when I’ve had no or little rain. Since a lot of my watering takes place before I get up, and I don’t see the notification of a rain delay, I end up running manual cycles.
I have an actual weather station connected to Wunderground and it is selected as the nearest weather station. But, there’s that dang ‘predicted’ rainfall getting in the way. I just got off a chat with one of your people and in the end, it was suggested I get a rain gauge?? I have a rain gauge. It’s an accurate part of a $500 weather station.
So, to the actual suggestion: Have a user selectable option to use actual rainfall only or your current methodology.
This would be a great option. Here in Florida the predicted rainfall amount is extremely unreliable as it can pour down the block and be sunny here. This would be a great update!!
Weather forecasting is a guessing game here in Florida starting now until September. It might rain every day, and it might not, but the weather always calls for it.
Rain skip is essentially useless, and I have to set my threshold at 1" of rain which is not helpful. A “use actual history” vs forecast would be ideal.
Another issue is the forecast, if active, doesn’t trigger until after I am asleep for a morning watering. Even if I check ahead of time and it says it’s going to water, I sometimes awake to “your watering has been skipped”. There should be a notification option to alert before x time and/or x hours ahead of time.
Hi @Dmage, thank you for these suggestions. We are considering some updates to our rain skip notification system, which could include a notion of scheduling when you receive the notification. Which would be more useful to you: “send notification at X:XX” or “send notification X hours before watering”?
I would also love to hear what would make rain skip more useful for you. Is it not really working because there is always some mid-level percentage of rain that sometimes is realized and sometimes not? We have this problem with convective thunderstorms in the Rockies as well and are exploring some way to make the feature more accurate. I would appreciate your input.
Hi @Stabone33 , if you could provide any details as to what you’d like to see with rain skip (either how it works w.r.t. forecasts, or how you receive notifications) we’ll take your feedback into account as we think about improvements.
For my scenario, I expect a “send notification by XX:XX” would be more useful, mainly because I am watering overnight with a set end time. With seasonal shift, the start time extends or shortens, therefore, a “send notification before 8pm” would be ideal to catch an alert prior to overnight.
And yes exactly re: mid level percent of rain. We have some great weather stations scattered about here in the central Florida area and when they detect rainfall its fairly close enough to ensure I most likely received rain - so, data from that received is pretty accurate for actuals.
However, when it comes to forecasting, the weathermen have an easy job in Orlando in the summer - 60% chance of rain from 3p - 6p every day. The problem is, I guarantee it rained somewhere, just not here. There can be storms 3 miles north that soak them and I receive nothing. When Rachio uses those reports, I tested last year and would have gone 3 weeks without watering if following the 1/4" or 1/2" skip on my schedule when I only received one short rainfall.
As the original poster, I’m glad to see Rachio is at least thinking about this. In the interim, I’ve just turned off all delays except freezing. I’d rather water after a rain, than not water because it rained somewhere within a few miles, which happens here all the time. When it’s well over 100 degrees, skipping an event can be disastrous for outdoor potted plants.
I’m also in Florida. My schedule is set as a Flex Daily. My Rachio is connected to my Davis Vantage Pro2 weather station in my backyard. The schedule is taking into account the forecast data and forecast data is unreliable especially this time of year. Sure would be nice to have a way for Rachio only to consider actual rainfall or if forecasting is to be considered, perhaps look back at precious day’s actual rainfall (or watering amount) and its forecast for that day and if there wasn’t any rain/watering it should go ahead and water regardless of today’s forecast. Maybe if Rachio hasn’t watered in 2 days due to forecast, water the next day if the soil moisture says it’s needed regardless of that day’s forecast. There has to be some way to make this work more reliably.
I understand forecasting helps to save water potentially but it is detrimental at times.
I second this, we have a whole topic on this issue - Rachio should never let soil moisture stay at 0% for more than one or two days, forecasts are… just wrong, a daily promise of rain and two months of draught. But the promise is there. Except the last three days, it poured over 10" in the last three days.
@ady624 is correct. Needs to work on observed and not predictions IF predictions indicate rain several days in a row and nothing is actually observed - i.e.it didn’t rain.
I also have a confusing issue that happened today. My watering was skipped. The message that I got was: … was skipped because your weather station KFLWILDWxxx observed 0.77 in of predicted and 0.00 in observed precipitation.
So, my weather station (my personal station in my yard) data actually predicted 0.02 inches of rain today yesterday evening and still the same this morning. WHERE did the 0.77 come from?
that might have been the prediction at the decision time (when Rachio checked and decided to skip). You are now looking at current predictions. Welcome to my life two weeks ago
That was exactly the problem, high predictions in the early morning tampering with Rachio’s job. Then the predictions go down and eventually no rain, but the damage has already been done (i.e. watering skipped).
It’s been 0.02 predicted since last night around 8 pm and currently says 0.02 for the day. I can’t believe that sometime during the night at the moment Rachio checked that it had jumped to 0.77.
