Just setup my Rachio in the last two weeks. I had one at my previous property years ago, but then lived in a condo for a while. Back to a house now and installed irrigation last fall so this is just being programmed for the first time.
As mentioned in the title, it rained all weekend here - got about 10mm of rain. I have a couple of zones on Flex Daily. In the iPhone app, the soil moisture shows 0%. But when I touch on it for detail, one zone shows it at 94%, another 93%, and a third 93%. The graph detail for all three also shows a depletion allowed of 50%. All three zones are scheduled to water today… why?
The chart showing 94% is what is expected after it does the irrigation today. It truly thinks it’s 0% currently.
so I Was reading through other posts and came across this one: No precipitation info on soil mosture I had the same issue in that my weather intelligence plus showed no precipitation this past weekend in the detail. I switched to a local station that I know had precipitation data over the weekend, and that also is not reported in Rachio. So it sounds like I have the same issue as that post. I am in Canada.
There are a number of posts here from Canadian users that relay inaccurate weather reports. I don’t think there has been a resolution - see this post from 2020. Forecast incorrect in Canada
Agree with @Alturia, I’m not sure WI+ is fully functioning outside of the US. Are you able to find a PWS system in your area that is showing precipitation correctly? If so, I’d switch to that and that should fix the precipitation issue.
Rachio is happy to sell you a controller in Canada, but the forecasting it uses is so bad that you really have to watch it every day yourself. The actual precipitation info is fine and is as accurate as your closest PWS. I don’t have an issue with that. it’s the forecasting (and hence prediction to water or not) that is dismal. I have to do manual turn-offs or turn-ons to avoid wet or dry lawns. That’s hardly a set and forget system.
It did respond to the forecast. I had some irrigation skipped on the weekend because of the impending rain. I also had a notification one morning that the expected rain didn’t happen and the irrigation would run. So that seems like it was working, but in hindsight now in might just have not recorded the rain that actually happened. I need some more data to verify.
I did switch it to a local PWS (I also have my own that I plan to link to but am not ready yet) that I verified reported rain on the weekend. However in the Rachio app it shows in the history no precipitation. I thought perhaps that changing the weather station wouldn’t retroactively update that data.
I’ll have to check again after the next rain event. Calgary is so dry though that I might have my own station hooked up by then!
I can’t confirm or deny that, but I don’t believe it does. The new one you switched to, were you able to confirm precipitation history? There is usually a link to a site where you can see the history of the PWS…
Yes I was able to confirm the station I switched showed precipitation on underground on the days that it did in fact rain. I only see two outages in the history from January 2021 to now, so am fairly confident in this station. It’s location looks like it’s at our local community centre.
Forecast is more rain this week so we shall see! I guess my question remains around the forecast as forecast and history are two separate things. I’ve picked a local station for history, but I assume Rachio will still use other forecasting information as a local station has no forecast.
