I do not see an option to restrict by time of day. In addition to having odd/even watering schedules, our city also prohibits watering between the hours of 11:00am - 5:00pm any day between the months of May - September. It would be nice to be able to set this up on the controller when creating a schedule to rule out something auto adjusting and extending a watering time during the prohibited period. We can be fined if found in violation.
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@jdg_mn, we do not currently support hourly/time of day restrictions, but appreciate you sharing your scheduling requirements with us.
Just curious, what is the current fine?
I do not know the fine amount, as I have only ever received a warning when my previous controller auto-adjusted my run times, extending watering into the restricted time. Having time of day restrictions would be a great feature.
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Our city just increased their fines for watering violations. Because of the heavy rains this year, they increased the allowed watering days from twice weekly to three times in June, July, and August. However, they went from a maximum fine of $45 for watering violations to $200 (on the 4th offense). Since they pull data from our water meters, they donât need to witness the violation to ticket us.
So I second the request to allow to program for a time of day restriction.
@jdg_mn and @chrisandeden - @franz has said that V3 of the software (which will work with both Gen 1 and Gen 2 of the hardware) will support this feature ->Is there a way to say "stop watering at a specific time?
$200?! 
They arenât messing around
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@chrisandeden, just to clarify, youâll be able to water 3 days per week in June, July & August?
When programing restrictions, do you prefer âblack outâ days/times, or âallowedâ days/times? i.e. negative or positive programming 
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Need a mix of both. We went from extreme restrictions (1 day per week from Nov 1 - April 30, 2 days per week May - Oct) to the current rules. Nov - March 1 day, April - May, and Sept - Oct twice, and June - August 3 times.
No matter the time of year, watering is prohibited from 9am to 6pm.
With the Rachio, my plant and tree zones (I have 3 of them) can run for hours, pushing my lawn run time into the prohibited times. I would like to have the system realize that there is not enough time to run the cycle before 9, so it holds off until 6 (when necessary). In the summer the lawn gets watered every time allowed, while the plants and trees only get watered every 7-10 days. But every so often, all of my zones are scheduled, and that bleeds over into the prohibited times.
All that said, when the city was having the discussion about this, the only worry was for residents needing to reprogram their timers additional times during the year. With my Rachio, itâll take me a whole 5 seconds to add or delete the days!!
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@chrisandeden I like the idea of the controller recognizing that it doesnât have enough time and deciding to wait to finish until after six⌠With restrictions getting more a more restrictive (
) there has to be some creative problem solving done to get all the necessary watering fit into the allotted time!
Here in CO, the city of Greeley just redid their restrictions to focus on amount of water used rather than days/times to water. Itâs a really cool idea, and the perfect application for a Rachio controller.
Thanks to an overhauled water budget system, residents may soon have the power to pick their days â any days; all days â so long as they stay within their budget.
Now if only we could get more cities to switch to this method!
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@mckynzee I wish our city was that forward thinking. Unfortunately, the dumbing down of restrictions leads to inefficient water usage. I truly understand that the more days the Rachio is allowed to water, the more efficient the water usage (on a long time horizon). However, in the middle of the drought here in CA, there was an article written that highlighted some of the problems here with forcing residents to save water.
We had people (I hate to admit this, but they were in my neighborhood, and general part of town, which is more upscale) that were ignoring the watering restrictions that had been cut down from 3 times weekly to 2, and were actually watering 5-6 times per week to keep their lawns alive. We live in a community with a large number of trees, including over 15 trees in our yard itself. My preference is to water the trees and keep them healthy, because lawn can die and be reseeded quickly, but mature trees are gone for the next 15 years. I should have that choice, but be charged for the water Iâm using appropriately. Our family of 5 has used less water than the average Fresno household for the last 2 years plus (the statistics are included on our monthly water bills). We save water in the house by showering quickly (and catching the water in a bucket while the water is heating up), doing only full loads of laundry in our front-loader, etc. I should be able to water whenever I want, as long as I keep below some type of âlow-useâ measurement. But government wants to take an easy path, that allows neighbors to âtattle,â and make it easy to cite those who break the rules. And with the increased fines for breaking the rules, they are going to stamp out non-compliance very quickly.
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@chrisandeden Thank you for sharing that article, super interesting. It is hard to watch watering districts continue to implement these archaic models for restrictions, I agree it feels like itâs just the easy way. Ultimately, a usage focused model is more logical, and sounds like it has proven more effective in the example of Santa Fe. However, at least for now, there is no getting around the current restrictions. Rather than wait around for restrictions to change, we just have to continue to make Rachio as useful as possible within the current parameters so our users can save as much water as possible and continue to have beautiful landscapes!
+1 to add Time of Day Restrictions to the scheduling algorithm. Regardless of the best method to manage water usage, my municipality restricts watering between the hours of 9AM and 6PM.
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Kind of resurrecting a bit older topic, but I would also like to be able to set time of day restrictions. My city bans sprinkler watering between 10am and 8pm, with fines starting at $80 and going up to $320.
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