What changed in flex scheduling?

I bet that is it, I don’t block out any days so I don’t see that kind of behavior

I switched back to fixed interval this year. Flex just doesn’t work properly. End of story. My system will water ten times a month. This doesn’t belittle the value of the Iro, I would still highly recommend it, but not flex. The ET calculations are just wrong and it doesn’t handle seasonal changes well or at all.

@mckynzee
You were right about the one zone that I had set with a slight slope was causing the others to break up their watering when that zone was included, so I took your advise and set all the zone to “slope” and guess what? Nothing changed! They still don’t break up the waterings. I’ve tried all the slope settings and it still waters the full time unless my one zone (East House) is included. I even recreated the schedule and it still didn’t work. Looks like a bug to me!

@franz
I know you’re the pro, but Flax has definitely changed from last year. We’re having a hot, dry spell but this year it’s just pouring on the water, even before it got hot. Last year I couldn’t wait till the next watering date. This year I can’t wait for a day it doesn’t run.

Last year I set my coefficient to .8 per your advise last May and it worked great. I lowered it to .7 because it was watering so often and it dropped the ET a little but it didn’t slow the waterings. I think you need to get a handle on what’s causing this behavior before people start receiving their super high water bills.

Thanks!

Mike

I just got my super high water bill a few days ago. About had a heart attack. This is the most rachio has ever watered in the year plus that Ive had it and here on the texas gulf coast we were in the rainy season. Can’t even imagine whats going to happen in july and august when we are super hot and dry. I went in and manually changed all my root depths deeper. On the plus side, I do have the greenest lushes lawn in the neighborhood :slight_smile: , but not sure yet if the outrageous water bill was worth it…

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Just out of curiosity. Of those that seem affected if you compare degree days last year to this year are they similar? I know degree days are generally a value looked at for HVAC purposes, but I’d imagine there’s a somewhat related trend-line between degree days and evaporation in the warmer seasons. Maybe it would be a very rough way of estimating how much if any changes in weather year to year have affected your watering.

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According to my electricity provider, last month was 1 degree warmer than previous year

Just out of curiosity, what was your reasoning for changing your root depth? Are you wanting your grass to water less frequently?

I am new to Rachio and installed the unit in early spring. I set it up using the Flexible daily and my yard is being watered like crazy. My last water bill was higher than I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even want to think about what my bill will look like this next month. I bought this unit to save me money but it looks like it’s going to cost me a fortune.

I assumed that by leaving the unit alone it would get caught up and save me some money down the road. It’s been up and running now for several months so it should be caught up. It’s watering several times per week. It currently shows 6 watering days on the schedule over the next 11 days. I don’t need stats to know that is way too much.

I am about to punt this experiment and switch to a fixed schedule but hopefully some advice will fix my problem.

My unit watered 4 hours and 19 mins this morning covering 7 zones and smart cycle. Checking the available water after the watering only shows .15 inch. Additionally, the moister level dropped to 30% down from 57% yesterday even after watering. Seems like the something is wrong here. Shouldn’t my moister levels increase after watering?

@macwinpro Hi, startup a new thread in the Flex daily forum and post some screenshots of your zone settings and we’ll get you situated. Also include a screenshot of one of your moisture graphs with the details expanded.

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will do thanks

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Yes - because my water bill was the highest I’ve ever had last month

I’m pretty sure my high wateri usage was partially due to a faulty temp sensor on my acu-rite 5in1 (reading 10 degrees too high). Unfortunately they seem to only last a year or so before temps start reading too high.

@lynda_thomas If you want, start a new thread in the flex daily forum and we can work on your settings specifically. I personally wouldn’t adjust your root depth to alter how often your grass waters. Changing your crop coefficient will be the easiest way to push out watering and not affect other settings.

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I’m having to manually adjust a few days after heavy rain as well. I know you can’t please all the people all the time, but I did like it better when max moisture was at 120%.

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My system has been watering every day. When I looked at my zones, 4 of the 5 zones were marked as depleted every day. I just adjusted all the zones to full and will see if I keep having the same problem. I have not adjusted any settings from last year.

I’m having the same issue with 2 of my 3 zones. They seem to water everyday - not sure why they arent watering to fill and waiting to water again until below depletion level?

@mbaturin It almost looks like your system can’t keep up with your ET depletion… could you do a manual run to bring these back to field capacity and see if that works as a kind of “reset”?

what are you watering… grass?

I could do that - Would you recommend going forward that I make the duration for these zones longer than 10 minutes? These zones are setup like this:

Did you reduce the recommended flex watering times? Regardless, I don’t think you need to adjust duration… I think something just got out of sync and it got in this cycle of being unable to catch up. This is a guess, I think we try it and check in and see if it helps to get your controller watering to field capacity more often.