Watering times Inquiry

Hi new to Rachio. Just a quick question to validate my understanding of the controller.

I previously had a old Hunter controller and have set to water to odd days only (every other day). My house is facing SouthWest so Sun for 6-8hours on the front lawn. I have 3 zones and the 1 zone has the front and back grass (rotor heads). I have that set to run 35 mins.

On the Rachio I have it set to Flex Monthly and noticed that it only waters my lawn every 4 days.

When I followed the schedule when creating the schedule, Rachio showed 37 mins run for front grass and 37 mins run for back grass.

I noticed with this setting the front lawn grass is not getting enough and shows signs of dry grass.

I upped the front lawn watering times to 60 minutes but im still thinking this is not enough as Im watering 90 minutes on the old controller?

Please suggest as I dont want to end up with a $1k water bill.

If you can post some screen shots of your zone settings (standard and advanced settings) we can take a look. Not know where you are, what kind of turf you have, or any other details, I can’t tell you what is right or wrong. BUT, I can tell you that Rachio will run the “correct” way, which is longer, deeper watering, less frequently. Many people freak out when they see what Rachio is trying to do, compared to what they always did with their dumb controller.

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Thanks for your reply.
Im located in Ontario Canada

My grass is mostly mic of perennial rye grass and kentucky blue grass

I just created the zones but didnt touch the advanced settings.

Both advanced setting is same for front and back zone



First off, it would be very beneficial to try and dial in your “nozzle inches per hour” setting in the advanced zone settings. The default settings Rachio uses for various nozzle types seem to be an average between a number of manufacturers, but these figures can be off quite a bit in some cases… Also, soil type is pretty important. Did you confirm your soil type in some fashion?