I was wondering that myself. Our water restrictions are about the same, but that is because the pressurized irrigation water gets shut off. I found the following that seems to indicate they will not run next year. Consequently, I do not have an end date and put the controller in standby right after I winterize it right after the water is shut off.
I’d say no to both. It won’t run and you haven’t set it up wrong. Just need to kick the start / end dates out for 2021 once your season is done (probably when you winterize it).
I like to use the standby as the dates can change in my case and I also turn off the main valve. This keep any accidental turning on of the sprinklers that may cause freezing.
As you know, more than one way exists to take care of this. Probably one way is not necessarily better than another. Thank you for asking about it and giving us the opportunity to try to help. As you notice from the second link I initially included, some have suggested the start & end dates to no include the year so it can handle some of this automatically. However, this has not gained traction.
Part of my winterization routine is to remove the above ground booster pump and just unplug the Rachio3. No need for it to do anything when that which it controls is inoperable.
As I recall, the recommendation is to leave the Rachio plugged in so it can do updates or whatever. Instead, they suggest you put it in Standby mode. Here is some information:
Actually the year doesn’t need to be removed or ignored. They could just add a checkbox by the dates:
[ ] Annual repeat
For the developers, if you read this:
If the box is checked, when the end date is reached the firmware just advances the start date and end date to the next year.
If the box is not checked, nothing changes. This means when the firmware is updated, this setting will default to Off (unchecked) so everything is backward compatible.
Correct, the checkbox is certainly one way to do it, maybe even better than ignoring the year. The only disadvantage that I can think of is if someone started/ended on a leap day, the next year would change to the 28th or what seems more likely the first . . . maybe not a big deal.
I am (also?) a software developer and tend not to tell others how to design it as I know sometimes it is easier said than done without knowing the inner-workings of the code.
I could imagine some might even want a “Month Repeat” for some water restrictions, but could see issues since all months are not equal length.
Now that I thought of this a little more, there’s a solution that would be tolerable. I could program 12 separate fixed schedules (one for each month). Then, every few months or so, I would just need to change the year on the ones that have passed. This would be a good time to adjust any schedules that need it.
I think I would try Flex Daily first. Then, if that fails, plan B would be the fixed schedules.
Costco has the Rachio 3 on sale for $150 through tomorrow and our local water utility is offering a 25% rebate. So that’s like $112.50 for the Rachio 3!
Hmm, the Rain Machine controllers have a “Yearly Recurring” checkbox for Fixed Schedules that will cause the program to repeat every year without any intervention.