Since the zone moisture is at 110%, it won’t water tomorrow regardless of rain or not. Soil moisture will need to get to 10% or below before watering will occur.
Emptying the zones as you have should cause it to water tomorrow, if you have it set to any/all days.
BTW, did you actually measure root depth in each zone?
Not that it matters what weather station you have, but I have a Davis Vantage Pro 2 and I have rain predictions in my area similar to yours as I stated in my post above yours.
Root depth is not there yet, new sod, about 5 weeks old, want to get it there. Haven’t measured yet, expecting about 3" for now. If I set the root depth to 3" I get too shallow waterings, using MP rotators.
Yeah, so each day it was supposed to water, I water myself using quick runs and then empty the zones again. Today I had to water it again as the blades are folding and the grass is wilting in the extreme sun, just haven’t yet emptied the zones - I do that every day I manually water. So this morning it was saying rain starts at 1pm. It now says 4pm, give it another hour, it will move back. Same story every day, no rain, just an ever moving prediction. On Wednesday evening I emptied the zones, had next watering happening Thu morning for all 5 zones, yay. Woke up in the morning, only the last two got watered, the first three were magically skipped. That’s because the early morning ones saw sufficient rain prediction, and as the time passed, that prediction moved back and eventually allowed the last two schedules to go on. Will see how it goes with a single schedule, assuming it will all be skipped if enough rain is expected at the 1am check. See, it checks early in the day, so it has a high chance of getting a high rain prediction. It currently says it will rain 0.87" today with a 70% chance. Yet still moving back every hour, so meh… But that .87" is high enough to not water anything for a few days, like I said, I get why Rachio does not water. It’s just that subsequent such decisions are a recipe to disaster, since it keeps “thinking” it will rain, but it never does, but Rachio is only forward looking, not backward looking to see the grass was not actually watered for a long time, irrigation or precipitation combined. I think there’s room to improve the algo.
When it rains, it pours… the dry spell ended with a monster 1.5” in the last hour, still raining. Since I emptied the zones, I expect rachio would want to water tomorrow, unless rain prediction for tomorrow is high. I believe the empty forces today’s end balance to 0.
Since it is new sod and really only about 3 inch root depth, I think going to 6 is too far in this short term. I’d try 4, wait a month or so and got to 5 and a month or so later go to 6. You want to train the roots to go deeper and not stress the plant in getting there.
Fair enough, switching to 4” until July 1st, then 5” until Aug 1st.
Meanwhile zones show 0%, Rachio says it will water tonight starting 2:32am (not needed) so I set an alarm for 2am to see where it is at then. Current prediction for tomorrow is 0.10” @ 30%
Thank you for going through this with me
Switching to 4” made the tomorrow scheduled watering go away. Next planned date looks like never LOL, Jun 23rd. Zones at 0%.
Lets see what it does over the next few days.
No watering this morning based on expected 0.49” precipitaiton. Zero so far.
Also, side note, yesterday’s precipitation was 1.59”, not sure where the 0.89” is coming from 
NC Rain from Tempest is 1.23”, local is 1.59”.
I’ve seen a chart like the first one in your post above but I can’t find it for my info. Where is it? EDIT: Found it under soil moisture.
My app predicted 10% chance of rain today but still watered. It predicts 10% chance tomorrow and still is flagged to water tomorrow. We’ll see if that still happens. Still predicts rain at 10 - 70% until the 19th. Shows 40% chance on the 19th and has the raindrop indicating it will water.
I find it odd that rain is being reported as avg .50 something per day. That’s a lot of rain.
For me, even if I get a little rain it won’t fill up completely the capacity (or bucket ) of the zone thus the schedule will still run.
Is it me or does it appear that your rain measurements are twice the amount of capacity (or bucket) a zone needs and is the reason why the zone isn’t kicking off and triggering?
Weather is different in all parts of the world sure, and I’m unfamiliar with your location but it just seems odd for that much rain predicated everyday. Usually I would see fluctuations like .05 to .20 on a decent thunderstorm . Even at .20 every once in a while for me is drastically different for you at .50 something everyday. That’s more than double of a thunderstorm for me and would have to happen every day.
Can you post screenshots of one of the trouble zones settings and advanced settings?
That 0.49 inches of rain today (6/8) should be measured. Forecasting starts tomorrow and is expected to be 0.32.
Is your Tempest getting wet from a neighbors watering?
This is because the amount of water from rain still isn’t enough to fill the bucket so irrigation triggers to supplement and help fill.
Which is why I think the other user maybe having issues. There’s something off with a setting calculation. We need to increase the amount of water the zone needs, since it thinks it’s getting about a half inch of water every day from rain, and since that’s probably double the capacity it needs to begin with it’s seen as too much water.
Best way to figure what number is max capacity is look on soil moisture graph for a day where your at 110% for me it’s at .4 I’m at max field capacity 110%.
Using my max field capacity you could see how rain predications of every day at .5 would cause the problem. Then when the system realizes it didn’t water and it’s an empty bucket it’s looking ahead at the next prediction showing .5. My irrigation puts down .36 during each full scheduled run. As mentioned most of our rain predictions are not even .1 for those storms where there’s a low chance of actually falling.
Now if a rain storm actually comes thru, a decent one, I tend to see about .23 of rain which fills that bucket and possibly wont irrigate until a day or so after.
Here’s an example of my irrigation number and some rain we’ve been getting.
Also doesn’t Tempest report actual rain collected vs predication?
Confirmed my assumption with a quick google search, that it doesn’t predict.
Is sleepy brook way the name of the tempest station?
Click on a zone, click on the moisture % and click on MORE DETAIL.
The chance of rain is one thing, but click on the calendar day in the main window to see how much rain is predicted for each day, or see the More Detail page, it shows predicted amounts for future days. Current day I did not yet figure out, I think max of actual and predicted.
My 110% capacity is 0.33. I can’t go back more than 4 days in the chart section. How did you go back and get April data?
I’m not sure about his Tempest but my Davis Vantage Pro 2 reports actual rain collected and has a forecast % and amount. However, Rachio has 0 in for 6/9 and 0.02 in for 6/10 while the Davis prediction is 0 inches for both days. Davis uses a weather service for its predictions but I’m not sure which one.
Where does Rachio get its predictions?
EDIT I just checked Rachio daily predictions against my Davis 7 day forecast and they don’t match % or predicted amount. So Rachio is getting its predictions from somewhere else and not my weather station.
That is still the forecast, it will change by the end of today to reflect actual. Tempest is on top of my house, some 16ft off the ground. It reports 0.00” rain today. I believe today’s display value is max(actual, predicted). Tomorrow’s is pure predicted.
That is the name, yes. I don’t have amount predictions in the Tempest app - it is possible that Rachio sources those from elsewhere, or it is a feature of the Rachio-Tempest integration?
You have to do it on the previous screen. Two little arrows on left and right of that previous screen.
That I’m not sure of
