How well does Rachio adjust for rain on a local weather station?
Super frustrated with Rainbird - woke at 6am to a 2" downpour, and sprinklers were happily running. Rain has been forecast for a while and the 5 day forecast shows it for today! The “seasonal adjustment” had changed itself to 148%!!
How often does Rachio check the local forecast and adjust the sprinkler times?
Also, Rainbird controller is insane in that you can’t stop a run from the app! Had to run outside and physically turn it off. I’m assuming Rachio will let you turn off in the app?
As long as the weather station you have it pointed to is reporting correctly (or have your own), it does very well. It will look at both forecasted, as well as check prior to a run for active rainfall. You can set the threshold before it skips as well.
I believe Rachio checks the weather for the next run 12 hours and 1 hour before the schedule starts. Rachio looks at actual rain 24 hours in the past and predicted rain 24 hours in the future. Below a certain probability/coverage of rain Rachio will multiple the probability times the forecasted amount to see if the rain skip should be invoked.
The seasonal adjustment is based on at least 10 years of historical data - it used to be 30, but I remember seeing a note where they updated that.
A physical rain sensor is a belt and suspenders approach that will stop rain that isn’t forecasted correctly.
Many times in these situations it is the chosen weather station that is the issue - i.e. not reporting any rain, etc. If there is a National Weather Service station near you I would suggest trying it for a while to see how things go.
I had issues using the weather intelligence network, where the controller tries to predict the weather at my location. It literally wanted to water during a hurricane.
However, selecting a specific weather station near my home has worked as expected. I monitored this station before installing the Rachio, so I know it records very similar to the conditions at my house.
The recommendations I’ve read on this site is to not use WI and instead choose a local weather station. I think the begs the question, does WI work for some people? Does it just not work the way it was intended?
It worked acceptably for me from when I installed the Rachio in 2021 until around the middle of 2022 when it lost any semblance of accuracy. If I recall correctly, there was a rollout of the weather intelligence feature to all systems around this time. Before, only certain models supported the weather intelligence feature. I’m not sure if it is related to my issues with it, but I switched to the local station and haven’t had any problems since.
