Yard is getting over watered this year with flexible daily

Has anybody else notice that their rachio gen 2 is running considerably longer and more often with flexible daily? Mine is running so much that it now over waters my yard to the point where I have water come up between my toes if I walk on it barefoot. I did a catch cup test and are using those values for each zone. These values worked out very well last year.

After the first time I noticed the over watering, I went back to each zone, reset to defaults and then set the inches per hour back to the catch cup setting with no help.

Here’s the chart for one that ran last night and now has water coming up between my toes, and rachio said it is at 81% moisture.

Weird. Something must have changed. Sudden increase in water pressure to irrigation, perhaps (e.g., new water well installed nearby)? Then a new cup test would be in order. Otherwise try adjusting (let’s see if I got this right) the “available water” content for soil down a bit to reduce application amount but THIS will increase the frequency. But if you were using defaults before, only changing the precipitation rate, and they worked last year… this is a hard problem to crack. You may end up experimenting a bit with the advanced settings until the over saturation goes away and the vegetation is happy. Or maybe keep settings as is and try “Fill” at the moisture chart daily until just the point when the soil is no longer squishy and let Flex take over from there…that’s likely what I’d do first.

Nothing has changed, on city water. It more feels like rachio calculations are off… It went from 110% on 5/14 to 0% in 5 days! In 7 days, I also received 0.16" of rain and 1.13" of irrigation for a weekly total of 1.29". I’m also in MN, we had a couple days in the 80’s, but most days have been in the 60’s.

@robnielsen

Had a quick check and the frequency looks spot on looking at evapotranspiration and bucket size (zone is .6in to fill up). Did notice the zone above only has a .35in/hr precip rate for the nozzle. That will be your biggest factor in how “long” it waters. I’d say anything watering over ~45m-50m to fill up a .6inch zone depth of water (field capacity) feels like too much water.

Your easiest lever for duration would be precip rate and easiest lever for frequency is probably the crop coefficient.

Hope this helps.

:cheers:

Thanks @franz

When I reset the zones. I’m pretty sure the crop coefficient changed from .7 to .8. I’ll try tweaking it downward. How much of an impact will changing the root depth, I know the roots are not 6" deep.

Root zone depth has a fairly significant impact. Longer roots means a deeper watering (more time) but more days in between for the roots to deplete out. Shorter roots will water less but more frequently. You can modify and the soil moisture graph should dynamically reflect (forecasted) the new “bucket” size of the zone so you can predict frequency, although it is dependent on the next two weeks weather so not exactly a perfect indicator.

:cheers: