New England had a very dry summer this year. My lawn is full of yellow spots, although I had set up an every other day watering schedule.
I would have reacted sooner, but I spent the early months of summer at my second home and damage had already been done when I returned.
Going forward, what can I do to supply extra water if it’s drier than usual?
It doesn’t look like Rachio’s native interface has any feature that will address my needs.
Can I use Alexa or IFTTT to achieve this?
A flex daily schedule should help
Exactly. A Flex Daily schedule takes into account forecast and actual rain (Actual from a nearby weather station of your choosing or the general area), and applies water when rain doesn’t keep up, which it normally doesn’t. Pretty much set and forget, once dialed in.
@Rachio_Newbie What kind of schedule are you using - Fixed, Flex Monthly, or Flex Daily? If you are using one of the flex schedules you may need to adjust the settings. This isn’t something Alexa can help with. I don’t know if IFTTT can help.
I’ve been on fixed schedule - every other day.
I’ll look into the flex schedule. Didn’t know there was a different mechanism altogether.
Thanks!
@Rachio_Newbie Well, if you are using a Fixed schedule then the solution is for you to go into the schedule and increase the duration. A fixed schedule means just that - it is fixed and doesn’t change. So if you experience drier conditions then you have to manually increase the duration.
A Flex Daily schedule means that Rachio will try to adjust the watering based on the weather conditions. A Flex Monthly is in between in that it will adjust but only once a month.