I am a 2022 retiree and a lawn care newbie of 1 year. have a Rachio sprinkler system controller in my garage that installed.I would like to pair it with the FLOMEC QS200 so I can stop watering my TTTF lawn after 1 inch of water has been dispersed.
The plumber wants to install the meter above ground along the sprinkler shutoff valve line.
Can I have someone wire the meter to the sprinkler valve wires that feed into my garage for my Rachio controller? Or will the meter need to have wires run from outside to the Rachio controller in my garage?
Flow would be measuring and calibrating your systems and Zones High and Low Flow off the Sub-main. Unless you actually preform a catch can test and dial that per emitting device flow inches per hour your not going to have accuracy. This would be wired to the controllers sensor terminals.
A soil moisture sensor will would be more accurate.
Simply, I believe you need a soil moisture sensor calibrated at your 1" requirements such as Toro Precision™ Soil
Sensor. Then once the Zone has the 1" requirement you calibrated, the irrigation to that Zone would be shut off.
The receiver is done at the controller and the sensor is in ground and wireless.
Have several in the field working with Rachio Gen 3 Pro Units they dial in great otherwise it wouldn’t be suggested. Please link the reviews you’re talking about.
First, thanks for responding. Is it possible to have a sensor in the front and back yard? Probably not.
I was looking at buying this one although it doesn’t work with Rachio:
I guess I could try one of the sensors you recommended out. Just a little skeptical based on the reviews I saw on Amazon for both sensors. Here are the reviews from Amazon on the sensors you recommended:
You can install multiple sensors, currently one sensor per receiver though. Thus, install one sensor in an area that’s similar to turf type or plant requirement to several Zones using that information for the other adjacent Zones programming and similar conditions and another in a different location for different parameters is absolutely doable!
I’m actually toying with the idea using them for water features autofill. Currently I have programmed Rachio for pool fills and water features and fountain basins by fabricating and calibrating emitters flow and duration using daily ET and making adjustments when necessary. This eliminated auto fill, floats poor performance, breakdowns, flooding, or not filling resulting in pump failures.
The Toro PRECISION™ SOIL SENSOR units are about $150.00 USD what is your location? I noticed your link to the flow meter was .au maybe I can probably get you to a direct distributor house in your area.
I’m in northern California near the capitol of Sacramento.
I keep running into problems of finding people who can actually install irrigation sensors. The one from Toro looks pretty simple to install. My question is durability.
Which is why I was leaning toward the LoRaWAN Wireless Sensor for Soil Moisture.
I can wire two Toro receivers that work with the soil moisture sensors to the Rachio controller. I believe I can wire one to S1 and the other to S2. I wonder if there are settings to select a zone for each one.
I tried to PM you. Just contact me directly at my email please. I will try to connect you to the rep who covers your area. I won’t go back and forth here. Thank you. wilwaterirrigation@yahoo.com
My apologies, but I don’t need a representative. I’ll just purchase two sensors online and install them. It’s not rocket science. Thank you for the offer though.
This is the entire problem with Rachio timers.
They are a cheap toy.
People that have no idea what they are doing install them and create havoc for their irrigation technician and/or plumber.
My advice is let a professional do it.
If you don’t know what you’re doing with it, you probably shouldn’t be doing things with it.
I need an irrigation technician huh? LMBAO. I need a technician to push a soil moisture sensor into my lawn and to connect a soil moisture receiver to my Rachio controller? Yeah right, sure buddy.
You’re going to tell me I need a technician. I am the last person who needs a technician. A soil moisture sensor doesn’t require a plumber to install one Einstein. But keep talking.
You sound like my ex landscaper who tried to tell me he would need to adjust my Hunter Rotary heads after installing them.
I told him, I WILL ADJUST my own rotary sprinklers because I want them setup a certain way. I had to show him how Hunter rotary heads are adjusted.
I had my third landscaper install Hunter PRS30 fixed spray heads in my front yard. He swapped out the 15 ft Hunter Pro nozzles on 3 of the risers to my 12 ft Hunter Pro nozzles. Why? Because he had no clue there is an adjustable screw on top to adjust the throw distance from the nozzle.
I agree @Tlicious, I do not find this anywhere close to rocket science. I got someone to do the landscape design which the landscaper made modifications to for the part he did and helped get things ready for my part. I also got a sprinkler designer to design, which I have modified three times since as I found parts did not work as well as the original design. I planned for quite a few things that they did not plan for (including low-voltage lighting) and am grateful. It seems to me that most professionals want to push their own things they are comfortable with & available from their local supply house and do not seem willing to learn something new.
