Hi everyone, I get my Rachio tomorrow woohoo but had a question. Due to my Orbit never working right my lawn is pretty dead as you can see in the photo. I got the Rachio for Flex Daily watering, but is it recommended I start with this or is it smart enough that if I enter the data saying there’s 0% soil moisture that it will water extra accordingly? I was going to just have it on a fixed schedule twice a day with the Orbit for a couple weeks to get it really good and wet before I decided to get the Rachio. Just wasn’t sure if Flex Daily assumes that the lawn is green and healthy when it starts out or not as the problem with the Orbit was that it clearly didn’t water it enough. Thanks!
Just wanted to quickly add that it actually arrived today! So I set it all up and did Flex Daily and it shows running from 11:50 p.m. tonight until 5:50 a m tomorrow but then not again for about 5 days. That’s definitely going to be too long I think, but please let me know if I should just trust it or adjust. I saw that I can select empty under soil moisture to put it back to 0%, so if tomorrow night little on is feeling super dry again being that it’s in the sun all day would it be recommended I just do that?
I usually only recommend starting with one or two zones (front/back) on flex daily to see how the system works. Give it a couple weeks, dial in, and then roll out to other zones if you are comfortable with the settings.
Have you actually watched the sprinklers run? From that picture it almost looks like you might have a pressure issue i.e. a busted sprinkler or line that’s not letting the other heads in the zone to come up properly. Not sure where or what type of turf that is but it will go dormant until given proper moisture to green up. I hesitate to call it dead just yet.