I have read that thread a few times; and still don’t understand where it ended up. Emil’s recommendation lead to watering of a few minutes, putting cups of water in the ground rather than gallons.
Look, here’s the thing; let’s make this simpler — say I have a 5ft diameter tree and a 10ft diameter tree on the same zone. Both using same plant factor.
Formula implemented at Landscape Water Requirement Calculators - Center for Landscape & Urban Horticulture
At average ETO 0.15
(Tree A) 5ft diameter tree : 6.43 gal/week
(Tree B) 10ft diameter tree : 25.70 gal/week
I have ZERO problem setting up emitters so that Tree B has 4x the output per hour than Tree A. Let’s say I put 3x2gph on A and 12x2gph on B. Close enough. One hour provides approx a week of water when ETO is 0.15. I could do that via a manual schedule.
BUT what about when ETO gets to 0.20 or 0.25 or more during the summer? Isn’t this what Flex Schedules are supposed to solve —- water more when the weather (hence ET) is higher? Rachio knows the ET and can calculate how much water is in the ground; what I don’t have is a way to convert the point gph into inches for the precipitation rate (in this case it’s calibrated for 1hr=ETO .15).
I won’t even claim to understand what the square foot measurement is supposed to be in such a scenario….