I’m at the end of my rope with this thing. Here in SoCal, it rained for two straight days. We had at least 2 inches of rain. I woke up this morning to see Rachio watering every zone in my already flooded yard. When I checked the moisture level in the app, most of my zones were listed at 9 percent or 19 percent, etc. The 2 inches of rain apparently did not add any moisture.
I manually changed the moisture level of each zone to 100 percent so it would not turn on again today.
If your moisture graphs are showing 9-19% with rain the last two days, it sounds as though the weather station that you have Rachio pointed to isn’t reporting rainfall amounts.
@adamkos @tmcgahey is correct, you need to update your weather station.
The current one you are using is over 10 miles away.
Here is more information on choosing a different, closer weather station.
@adamkos Also, I’d probably choose a personal weather station (PWS) which will be a lot closer. Noticed one that was only 2 miles from your house on the map.
Hi franz,
I was using the PWS called PWS_ARTHUS. They seem to not report any participation. Probably why Rachio didn’t stop watering. I just switched it to KVNY this morning. It is 10 miles away. How can I tell which of those PWS will be reliable?
Also, what exactly is a Personal Weather Station? Is that one of those little devices that people buy from Costco? Are they reliable?
If you click on the “More Info” link on the station (station selection screen) it will show you what it reported. Looks like yesterday was over 2 inches like you mentioned!
http://www.pwsweather.com/obs/archive/yest/KCASANTA820.html
http://www.pwsweather.com/obs/archive/yest/KCASANTA820.html
Great question, yes usually a station someone has in their backyard. They can be bought for as little as $150(?) and provide temperature and precipitation data. Amazon also has a lot of PWS for sale.
If they are maintained can be highly reliable. I have one in my backyard for the highest level of accuracy 
Have a great weekend and congratulations on the rain!
I’m using an Ambient Weather station. I links up with a Rachio controller just fine.
I’m using an accuweather 5 in one pws. No problems.
Yes you can get an accuweather at Costco.
This is a basic problem with the Rachio system. It relies on weather stations that aren’t in your yard. I have also had issues with using a PWS that wasn’t reporting rain amounts. The better system would be a Rachio unit that has a percepitation gauge that could be mounted on your property to accurately measure rain amounts.
Feel free to add a rain sensor. Rachio has provisions for one.
Otherwise, not sure how PWS outages is really a problem with the “Rachio system”. I’m betting a vast majority of users (myself included) don’t have rain gauges and will rely on the weather intelligence of Rachio.
I am suggesting a rain guage that measures the amount of rain, not just a simple on/off guage. The basis for Rachio weather intelligence is precipitation information from PWS or weather stations that in most cases are not in your yard. I use a PWS that is 4.11 miles from my home and it often shows rain that I did not receive. An integrated rain guage would greatly increase the information used by Rachio to determine watering schedules. This is a product development suggestion, not a slight against Rachio.
This thing is rubbish. Why would I want to tie it to a single, likely unreliable weather station. My assumption was that the “aggregate” option was using an artificial intelligence to predict soil moisture content from the point source of each controller. If it doesn’t do this then it is complete rubbish and I will be telling everyone I know not to get one. Who’s crackpot idea was it to use a single weather station?
If you have the weather intelligence plus feature (currently on our generation 3 hardware) we allow you to choose a single station for precipitation or an interpolated amount of precipitation based on your geocoordinates.
Trust me, Rachio is far from “rubbish”. I have been on my Rachio Gen1 for a long time now, and even using a single “likely unreliable” weather station, my yard has been doing great and other than my winter over seeding of grass, it is almost completely hands off. At the end of the day, Rachio is still going to make a lot of very calculated assumptions about soil conditions, and if ET is off by just a smidge, I highly doubt your lawn will notice.
