I live in the Phoenix area and got the Rachio 3 at the beginning of December. My old Irritrol controller died last year and got the Rachio 3 upgrade. I upgraded, mainly for the drip. The frequency was based on Moon Valley Nursery’s recommendations and the run times were mostly a guestimate. I think I wasted so much water from the drip and got the Rachio to save a lot of water.
Valves
1: Front Yard Drip
2: Back Yard Drip
3: Front Yard Pots
4: Back Yard Pots
5-6: Front Yard Lawn
7-9: Back Yard Lawn
I use Flex Daily Schedule for my drip (Valves 1-2). All the trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and vines are in one zone. The majority are under 20 feet so I use the shrub setting to keep the majority of the plants happy.
It last ran on December 2nd. I got 0.6 inches of rain in the middle of December. It is scheduled to water again on 1/14 or so. I am very surprised it has not run since December 2nd. The Rachio 3 currently has the run times at 3h 21m for each zone (1 and 2). I looked up my soil and it says Gilman Loams, which is 2in/ft or 0.17in/in. The watering time changes to 2h 50m for each zone and there are 2 zones on the schedule. at the new Available Water setting from switch soil types. The drip emitters are a mix of 1GPH 2GPH and 4GPH. Most of the emitters are 2GPH.
My current setup for Valves 1-2:
Zone Type: Shrubs
Spray Head: Emitter
Soil Type: Clay Loam
Exposure: Lots of Sun
Slope: Steep
Advanced:
Available Water: 0.2in/in
Root Depth: 15.8in
Allowed Depletion 50%
Efficiency 90%
Crop Coefficient 70%
Nozzle Inches Per Hour: 0.5in
Is there anything that I am doing incorrectly with the scedule?
I also use the Fixed Schedule for the lawn as I wrote down all the run times and frequency that worked for each month based on when the grass started showing signs of thirst for the past 3 years.
I also have above-ground 24 in diameter pots that I want to use Flex Daily (Valves 3-4). The pots might need a lot more fine-tuning than the drip.