I’ve looked through the community for my answer but no luck and a little confusion. I’m very new and really on my first week with the Rachio and a daily flex schedule. The system has ran 2 days in a row. Each day Zones 1,2 and 5 of my five zones show an increase from 0% to about a 25% increase in moisture level. Seems reasonable. Zones 3 & 4 have remained at 0 both days with no increase in moisture level at all. Just doesn’t seem right. All zones have the same soil type: Loamy Sand. I used both the mason jar test and the web soil survey site. The only difference is root length. Zones 1,2 & 5 are 7” and zone 3 & 4 are 5”. I’ve read several of the support pages on moisture level. I understand the zones may not be able to keep up with the depletion but just doesn’t seem right the zones 3 & 4 don’t show any movement off of 0% moisture level even after watering. Any help is appreciated.
Does the zone moisture balance chart show precipitation and watering values? It may be that evapotranspiration/plant use is high enough to negate water additions but does seem suspect.
There’s a triangle next to the irrigation row you can tap to expand watering details. Also to the right of the chart there’s a button to view more of the chart and table for forecasted weather and watering.
Here is what I see. It could be it just needs some time. I noticed that zone 3 has finally move up to 6%. Zone 4 at zero. Time will tell.
It appears plant water use/evapotranspiration is outpacing the amount of water they’re getting so that keeps the balance at zero. The question is why the schedule is hardly irrigating.
Only way it would be doing that is if user manually adjusted time down in the schedule I would think…no?
That was my hunch. If so, the user should recreate the schedule to get an adequate duration. If it seems too long, we can provide guidance on if it’s fine (reasonable deep watering) or if adjustments to advanced zone settings should be made. Most commonly, the Root depth and nozzle in/hr using the catch can test.
I appreciate the help and information. Reading things I think I strived for perfection from day one and I need a little patience. I did change a few of the advance settings. I dug up spots in my zones to try and determine root length. I had zones 1,2 & 5 at 7” and zones 3 & 4 at 5”. My root measure was sad and needs to be done right. I also followed these instructions to figure out soil type (did the mason jar test too) and available water. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwuNWbi9blyialJzSWxRQnRTcDQ/view I measured for available water at 10 & 15 inches. At 10 inches it was 0.04 centimeters per centimeter at 15 inches it was 0.06. I thought I would be smart and start at 0.04 or the average of 0.05. The default is 0.07. Here is my way ahead pending any advice. I set all the advance settings back to default (thinking about 0.06 for available water). This shows 21 minutes for zones 1-4 and 13 minutes for zone 5 (very small zone). Now the schedule shows 1 sometimes 2 days between watering. I also ordered a soil probe to check root depth later. I will also do the catch can test just to have the information if future adjustments are need. I’m very impressed with the system and hope to get it right for my centipede lawn in Myrtle Beach SC.
This sounds like excellent, diligent work tuning your Flex schedules! More folks should have the same care and interest to do that tuning. Your way forward sound good and seems like resetting your settings may have resolved the water duration & soil moisture staying at zero issue if it’s showing watering every other day instead of everyday. The catch cup test and soil probe will provide excellent data for tuning.