It isn’t guessing. It is using the information about zone settings, plus weather data to CALCULATE soil moisture. This method is used all the time in agriculture and turf.
Shame that you feel that way. I’ve been using Rachio Flex Daily schedules for almost 8 years in Arizona with great success. This year we broke a record of 79 consecutive days over 100 degrees so far, and while my water bill is at a record high to keep up (water rates increased drastically this year), my yard looks great. I do have some Ficus trees and citrus that have physical burning, but no amount of water is going to stop that with our prolonged heat this year.
Then consider yourself lucky your plants have what they require. You can “calculate” moisture levels all you want…the fact is it and you have no clue unless you stick a finger in it.
The Ag industry uses things like Evapotranspiration to dial in their systems but they also know which specific crops they are growing and the levels they require. They are NOT guessing like these systems about which plants are being watered in mixed gardens. Your juniper trees don’t require water hardly at all while your Bermuda grass needs a monsoon. Rachio has no idea what crop is being irrigated and therefore success here largely luck dependent as there is no way plants can give the unit feedback on how they are doing. Only you can do this visually.
The product reviews for these automatic features for ALL controllers not just Rachio are full of horror stories. Sure you can set it up close designate the general crop type (8 for Rachio) but only the plants can give you the feedback for how they are responding and so without a controlled test, I would be willing to bet that success and failure rates here are anecdotal.
You are 100% right, but that is where the fine tuning and dialing things in comes into play. Most every yard has a massive variation of vegetation, and you have to fine tune things so that you make most of the plants (or your most important plants at the very least) happy. The system is still calculating the needs based on ET, Kc, etc.
All the cases that you reference, soil probes, or sticking your finger in the soil still doesn’t “fix” the fact that like you said, each plant has different needs. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that if you take some time to dial things in, the system can 100% be set it and forget it.
At the end of the day, Rachio Flex Schedules aren’t for everyone. People with horribly maintained systems or poorly designed systems will struggle without a doubt. People have come on here before having a single zone that has sprinklers for grass, single 1gph drip emitters watering trees and shrubs, which will be almost impossible to set up correctly with Flex Daily, but will also be extremely difficult to set up fixed schedules that will keep things happy.
@Demitry, I’d love for you to actually spend a bit of time creating your own post, share your yard setup, your settings, and let some of the community members help you dial things in. I think you’d be pleasantly surprised.
I installed Rachios at my mother in laws house and helped my next door neighbor install both of theirs.
At my in laws the Rachio unit does a great job, they love it…I have no complaints their yard is fairly simple, roses, boxwood and a small patch of turf. I might play with the Flex Schedule here to see how it does as everything is isolated and on it’s own zone.
My neighbor has TWO Rachios set up she also loves it, her yard looks great but she (along with every neighbor in my neighborhood) has the same problem I have which is two separate valve sets making Flex Scheduling a no go as the valves are affected by pressure if one zone runs during the other. Running the 24v lines back to the front is not viable as in ground is all concrete part of the way around and running the wire into the rafters is ugly. So she has two units and just adjusts them as needed. She’s happy.
For me I’m using OpenSprinkler on a fixed schedule to bridge the two valve sets that I adjust manually. One short duration repeating to prevent runoff (sloping turf) (3 valves - 1 for Hedges the other two for fescue) and the other a two set times for my back yard lawn. (3 vavles all for my fescue). The unit does have the ability to use ET based adjustments like Rachio but I haven’t played with it. Maybe I’ll try it. My main gripe that keeps me from using Rachio myself is that I want it to function as a single unit and hence why I don’t use one personally. Yet…
Currently I’m researching some remote relays that I think I can configure which would allow me to wirelessly extend the ports on a Rachio manually, I could then accomplish what I want with just one controller. Not really cost effective so far but will see. If I wind up going this route I’ll be sure to share the setup as I’ve seen quite a few people with this need. This wireless 24v line extender is really a product I wish rachio offered.
Not everyone has gigabit internet, and cell service is less than adequate in all too many locations.
If you really want to contribute to the education of buyers, gather all of those pages and create a PDF that would benefit everybody. If you include some tutorials on how to use the flex daily schedules you will win converts.
