Weather Intelligence and Skips

I am a new user of a Gen 3 with a PWS. My question concerns weather intelligence skips.
I have my controller set up on a Flex Daily schedule. I notice that as I receive rain the next scheduled watering event is adjusted to later date as I would expect. What I don’t understand is why when a watering event is adjusted to later date it doesn’t show up as WI Skip and a savings.
Can someone explain this to me.

Thanks in advance
Kevin

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@Kjf I have noticed the same thing. I agree, it would seem that it should be included, as a gain over a conventional schedule. Our rainfall is very local, and I haven’t seen the “savings” documented by Rachio, however have sure seen the savings documented in my water bill.

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Yes!

Great question. Even though flex daily is the most efficient way to water we still haven’t implemented a way to show savings (whether in skips or savings). I always say flex daily is an anti-schedule since it doesn’t water until it has to. To be honest we spent a lot of time rebuilding our entire watering platform which put these type of features behind a bit.

Agreed.

Fantastic, love to hear these stories :smile:

@mckynzee @mitchell I have ideas on how to implement this :wink:

:cheers:

@franz, to me it’s really simple, write the schedule to a file, compare that file against an updated calculation, an show the results as a savings. Of course one must make a note of the last comparison timestamp such that accumulated savings are not double stamped.

@mckynzee, @mitchell - how about if on the first of the month the number/minutes/gallons of waterings that would occur if the schedule as set up a Flex Monthly were calculated and stored (no rainfall, just how long the average ET would take to drain the available water the sprinklers to fill it back up) and then compared to what Flex actually did. This could result in negative savings if there was no rain and the ET was higher than historical averages.

@DLane this would require the flow meter accessory. As a cheap selling point, it’s better to have a method that assumes someone does not have the flow meter, then if they do, provide even more accurate data.

@eckirchn - the flow meter isn’t required for number of waterings or minutes of water, only if they want gallons to be accurate as I think Rachio brought back the estimated gallons (most folks were way off).

That’s essentially the easiest way to back into savings since flex monthly is a 30 year normals model and without any external forces (i.e. real weather) the best you can do without daily adjustments. We need you on the engineering team!

:cheers:

I have no idea how any device could calculate Zone use gallons / minute. I have 120 PSI feed to my house, and regulate that down to something, no idea what I even regulate it down to (I need a pressure gauge for many reasons). Even making an assumption based on generic Sprinkler Head data, that is still a very vague estimate of water usage per zone.

@eckirchn - that is why Rachio initially took out the calculated estimated gallons used/saved until there was an uproar on the community. Area, Precipitation Rate and Time are used to calculate the estimated gallons. If one didn’t update the zone’s square feet (like I didn’t) the number won’t have correlation to real world data. Others measured and performed catch cup test - or backed into the values from observing their water meter - and they reported the calculated values to be close to real world data.

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I haven’t done my cup test with the Rachio, but I did do it with the B-Hyve. It’s amazing how little real world difference there are between the two. Granted, I had a WU API key prior to them removing that ability for free. I know my conventional model over 10 years at the same property, and structured my settings to mimic what I know worked, the added gains from the PWS are huge. It’s a shame that Orbit doesn’t understand that you should just display the projected schedule prior to the fact.

Otherwise, both Rachio and Orbit use the exact same methods, Rachio just offers the power user a bit more functionality.

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Thank you for the explanation. Looking forward to the continued savings.

Since flex daily saves everytime the weather changes, not just rain, I think the only comparison a for savings you could use is against a fixed schedule usage like a dumb timer implements. It is possible that a flex daily could use more water than a fixed schedule as it is intended not to let things die in a heat wave also.

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Hello new user here.
Just let me confirm… if I am on flex daily then skips due to WI+ won’t be shown ?
My system has been running a few months now and I have 0 skips in all that time.
I also need to water manually quite often.
Doesn’t flex daily adjust the watering based on temperature as well ?
Thanks in advance.

Yes, we haven’t derived savings for flex daily yet.

It does. I would try increasing your zone crop coefficient (5%-15%) if you want a little bit more frequency.

:cheers:

My app gives me the option of watering on EVEN DAYS or ODD DAYS
On the website I see an image that gives the option of ANY DAY…
I don’t have that option. Any idea why not ?
Thanks in advance