Seeding / Lawn Repair / Sodding

I have been a Rachio 3 user for 2 seasons now. Been happy with everything, would like to suggest an option to toggle / set zones / see some sort of scheduling option run a zone more frequently in order to keep new grass seed / or sod moist throughout the day.

Just to let you know what I’ve done for my partial new sod to my back yard zone. August is a horrible time to put in sod in South Carolina, but I use Flex Daily for watering. So I made up a new Fixed schedule with times that I calculated would apply 0.15" of water in one day. While it’s a bit cooler right now, my normal ET per day is 0.2 to 0.25" at this time. Anyhow, I figured 15 minutes of watering would give me the 0.15". I started the new Fixed schedule at 10 AM, and set it for a Cycle time of 5 minutes and a Soak time of 3:55, meaning it will water every 4 hours, or at 10 AM, 2PM and 6 PM. That seems about right to keep the SC heat from burning the grass.

In the meantime, my Flex Daily schedule makes up the difference. It still waters when moisture gets low, watering more deeply, but considering the water applied daily by the Sod schedule. The only thing I haven’t really considered is that I’m sure I lose more water by watering in the heat of the day, so no doubt don’t get full use of the Sod water applied. Lately there’s been a good bid of rain with Fred, so haven’t bothered. But my temporarily increase the zone’s Crop Coefficient a bit to insure it gets enough water.

Hope this helps. I know your post is a suggestion to have something built into the program, and I agree. But in the meantime…

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Thanks - I am going to try your suggestion. I am up in Canada near Michigan, and I agree with you that it’s not the best time to be sodding, but I was at the mercy of our only sod farm who is overwhelmed with orders this year of people fixing their lawns (must be from staying at home, haha).