@Linn so I don’t know how it could not depend on temperature, as aside from rainfall that is primary weather input into most evapotranspiration models I’m aware of (e.g., Penman-Monteith and Hargreaves-Samani). Also the forecast data is correct and the projected irrigation schedule is consistent with what it was in the past before the WI data went bad; however, the trailing soil moisture is always far less than the forecast, less than they historically were, and less than they should be based on observation.
In order to keep things alive I’ve been going through and resetting the soil moisture by hand every night since the pattern is that it says it’ll run the next day based on the forecast but then uses the incorrect data and decides not to run in the morning. So at this point there’s only 2 zones that used to run every 2-3 days that were not reset: Zone 1 and Zone 6 (screenshots in the links).
Also FWIW I was on the PG&E (electric company) portal yesterday. They graph temperature as a metric on the same graph as energy usage since that’s the primary driver of power usage and their temperature data is wrong, too! So I think both Rachio and PG&E buy their weather data feed from the same source (likely the Weather Group, LLC who owns The Weather Channel and the Weather Underground) and that data source is wrong. I’m guessing based on zip code or something it lumped me in with a nearby coastal city like Watsonville (zip code 95076 vs mine 95037) which would have these temperatures.
So:
- How do I escalate this? Because I’m pretty sure I’m correct (fwiw I have 30+ years of professional experience with software automation and 8 with irrigation automation, having partly written my own software at my previous house).
- What workarounds do I have w/o destroying all the hard work I put into getting Flex Daily working? Because I have 22 zones and managing the water by hand every night is getting old real fast.