So, the reason of water usage by gallon disappeared in V3 was for users to move to ‘wireless flow meter’ ? I am satisfied to the estimation of usage, whether it has any margin or not. At least I can see the trend if I set ‘Precipitation Rate’ and ‘area’ of zones correctly.
It is quite disappointed not to include usage estimation feature in new app in order for people to buy Gen3 controller.
Hey @eunchan-
This was not the reason we removed gallons estimated. The reason we removed this from the app is because it was difficult to configure, and was causing users to not get accurate ideas of their watering usage. At this time, the most accurate reading we can give users is minutes/hours used. In the future, we hope to make configuring this easier for users so they can more effectively get accurate gallons used.
Hope this helps!
McKynzee 
I think most of the users doesn’t care the accuracy of water usage by gallon. It shows the trend how much I uses the water. And to calculate this, it is not that difficult if you already know ‘pr’ and ‘area’ (area * pr * minutes then unit conversion). Isn’t it true? I will do it for you:
usage(gal) = 7.48052(gal/cuft) * area(sqft) * pr (in/hr) / 12(in) * minutes/60(min)
I think Rachio supposed to have margin of ‘pr’ and ‘area’ since it can have error by measuring the catch cup or measuring the area with ruler. Then will you guys also remove the feature of ‘pr’ or ‘area’ field since it cannot be accurate? That doesn’t make sense to me…
It remains highly inaccurate to bundle minutes into a single report bucket. I cannot fathom how anyone within Rachio’s teams who care about data accuracy accepted this measure as useful unless someone high enough put their foot down and made you guys do it.
If you reported per zone it would be one thing, but counting a minute as an equal unit of measure across zones in wildly different configurations is just a terrible model. 
@scorp508, as head of support I can confirm this was a major point of confusion for the majority of our users. Few took the time to properly measure their zone’s square footage and complete catch cup tests for each zone.
If you haven’t already discovered, the estimated zone usage is reported on the CSV usage download on the web app.
As you’ve seen, it’s the Season of Innovation and there’s still more fun updates in the works 
I don’t doubt that a bit and as someone who’s tried to do catch cup tests I understand the user frustration and challenges V2 had with gallons. Totally appreciate that. Honestly. But… replacing it with an all up minutes counter just seems like a bigger miss. I’d rather have nothing than something not meaningful and somewhat misleading.
Good to know thanks, but hopefully the season of innovation brings per zone into the app. 
How tough is it to take my PR per sprinkler and take it times the number of sprinklers in that zone? The only question you lack is number of sprinklers in a zone.
You already know how long you’re running my sprinklers and you know what the PR is for that sprinkler. If you let me put in the number of sprinklers for each zone, you’d have a very accurate gallons used.
Time used is meaningless. It doesn’t tell me anything. Add sprinklers per zone and the problems is solved!
Mike
I don’t know, I support the idea, there are many posts about the estimated usage. It is equally misleading when your pr or square footage is way off.
If you know your pr, then it’s a simple step to get your square footage, so why do you need number of heads. You also assume that the heads were installed by someone that matched them all up to distribute a consistent pr, sadly this is not as common as you would think
I never understood what square footage has to do with gallons used. You don’t know how big of area I’m covering. Is it set close or far, 360, 180 or 90 degrees.
Really, who cares about square footage. If I have 5 sprinklers on a zone that each distribute 100 gallons per hour, then obviously I’ve just used 500 gallons in a hour. Period. No square footage required.
In fact previous to V3, the gallons used was just a wild guess, but a hell of a lot better than minutes used. What does minutes used tell me? Guess I could do the math myself using the formula above, but isn’t that what computers are for? I think you guys are WAY over thinking this…
Mike
I agree that gallons used needs to be re implemented ASAP!
I also agree that the old method of calculating usage was overly burdensome but was necessary to implement the more complicated / precise moisture levels of a given zone.
This is why I have suggested a 2 level user interface in the past. There needs to be a standard user and professional user interface. The standard user interface can simply ask the user to enter the gallons used per the water meter after 10 min of run time in each zone. No flow meter, nozzle types, grass type, root depth, slope, or other info necessary. Then give the user a +/- water per zone on the flex daily schedule. A zone is dry, + water on that zone. When a user +/- on a zone, remind them that this adjustment can take several days to acclimate and should not be adjusted excessively. Pretty simple. Then make the professional interface as complicated as the pros want.
A head that covers 360 degrees should put out 4x the water than a head that covers 90 degrees. Else the efficiency of your system is way low. Pr is the distribution of a volume of water over an area, hence square footage. You should look at the formula for pr, it has area in it, it just gets normalized out so you have to add it back in to work backwards. It’s basic algebra…
This discussion we are having really highlights why it was removed.
P.s. if you have a mixture of patterns with the same nozzle on each head, your system has an efficiency rating so low, it makes a 70’s hemi blush.
Precipitation Rate was the incorrect term that I used. Yup, I understand algebra, and a lot more. Oh, and I don’t own a Mopar either. But I digress…
I’m not a yard nerd so the term I should have used was GPM. After all, that’s what we’re trying to ascertain, gallons used? Right? Doesn’t make any difference whether I’m doing 360’s or 180’s (not in my hemi) or what my area is, because all I’m concerned with if how many GPM is running though my nozzles. I don’t care where it’s going or what it’s efficiency is. Just GPM.
All my nozzles are the same and using a catch cup test, I know what my Pr is and efficiency is as well. That’s what’s plugged into the app. Even if I have a mix of nozzles in a zone I can average them. Yeah, there are people that don’t go to the trouble of a catch cup test. In fact they just pick one of the standard nozzles offered to them in the app, which means they’re probably way off in calculations.
Point being, whether I go to the trouble of doing a catch cup test or just select a standard nozzle, there’s a Pr for my zone (actually per nozzle as Rachio doesn’t know the number of nozzles), and if I know how many nozzles I have in that zone and what my average Pr is, I can calculate my GPM. Bingo!
If you’d like to tell me how minutes ran tells me anything then feel free to explain it. To me it means nothing unless I do manual calculations myself.
P.S. It will all become a moot point once my V3 and flow sensor show up!
Mike
A rotor head turning 360* or a fixed 360* spray head?
Rotary.
Yea, I think that is the point.
So the point I’m trying to make, if you have a rotary at 360, without head to head coverage, that 360 nozzle should have 2x the gpm flow rate as the 180 nozzle, so to capture gpm, rachio app would require not only number of nozzles but gpm for each nozzle. That’s more ghetto in my opinion than removing the feature or using pr.
Calibrating the Rachio so that reported gallons used is accurate is as simple as noting the reading on my water companie’s meter and the Rachio, running the zone for like 3 minutes, comparing the readings and adjusting the custom nozzle setting (in v2). I have 15 zones and this took less than 5 minutes/zone to set up. The gallons used as reported by my Rachio was within 2% of what the water company billed me. No cups, no square footage, simple.
Bottom line. Give users this simple set up if need be, but regardless GIVE USERS LIKE ME THE FUNCTIONALITY WE HAD IN V2, PLEASE.
I would agree that having a GPM setting per zone would be a simple beneficial addition … but that might undermine the market for a wireless flow sensor. 
I too am very disappointed to see the gallons used removed. After calibrating my system and measuring actual areas my efforts have been thrown away by this new software version.
I liked the old version very much and while I would expect some changes (hopefully improvements) I find this new version a big step backwards in a lot of ways.
How about a toggle in the UI so those of us that want gallons can keep that, perhaps after agreeing to a disclaimer about how it may be inaccurate? I spent considerable effort getting all the numbers right so the GPM was accurate per zone.
Or more generally, how about an Expert mode toggle for those of us that understand what all the various settings are and how they’re used. That way you can make the general UI easier for people to understand without alienating the power users that already did the work.