All of a sudden all of my zones are showing zero moisture despite the fact that each has received adequate water.
Update: system ran overnight approximately 17 min per zone, now each zone reads approximately 38% moisture. The very first time it ran (two weeks ago) after install all zones read zero moisture and each zone ran for approximately 40 minutes.
Not very consistent.
Moisture levels of zones are based on the weather reported by the selected Weather Station. So if it’s hotter now than two weeks ago, then the moisture won’t last as long, or more water will be used to allow for the evap…ion thing.
Makes perfect sense.
But my system is not operating like that.
Last water cycle was Thursday (two days ago) yesterday moisture averaged 40% per zone. This morning all zone read 0%.
I don’t believe it.
Please post screenshots of the zone settings including the advanced settings. We should be able to tell right away.
For crop coefficient turn on dynamic, click the lock button your currently set at 65 which is low. When you turn on dynamic what is the reading?
Also root depth appears to be really low too? Is that normal I have cool season grass and I’m set to 6”. Rachios’ default for warm season is 9.
That should make it water more frequently.
Go into the schedule and see what the duration is. Usually if you manually adjusted the duration there it will mess with the calculations. If that happened delete the schedule and re-create it and you should see the duration grab the advanced settings that you have. To adjust the duration it’s the nozzle inches per hour, lower it to run it longer, raise it to run it shorter.
The idea is that you want to water for longer duration but less frequent; not every day but every other day in the extreme heat.
I had to adjust one more thing due to the increased duration. Initially I thought I was watering too much since I saw pooling and run off of water. It ended up being that my soil just takes a bit longer for the water to soak thru; probably because of compaction. Initially I had clay soil set but after a soil test it was determined we have sandy loam. I had to turn on the manual cycle and soak so I water for 12 min burst with 30 min breaks. Since I have 7 zones it will run thru the entire schedule, and the go back and run thru it again. My zones run total 33 mins each, so 12-12-9. I find that the water soaks in I don’t get run off and no pooling. The lawn is extremely happy.
One more last thought prior to this year Rachio had a static crop coefficient, so previous years it would water too much in spring and fall and not enough in the summer. The dynamic function so far I have been happy with although it was only flicked on (rolled out) in June July for us. Tomorrow is the new month so we’ll see what next months value is. July we were set to water every other day and June it was every two days then water.
Here is where my confusion is coming from.
This was the very first cycle after install a few weeks ago. Seemed like too much water but I figured I’d let the system do its thing.
Here is the projections for the next watering cycle which is set for early tomorrow morning.
In both of the above watering cycles the moisture was listed as zero.
The first was zero, I assume, because it was the initial watering after install. The zero moisture now is a mystery to me.
Why the huge disparity in watering durations is also a mystery.
As for root depth my research indicated my type of grass is 4-6 inches.
Thanks for your help
So do you have yours set to water everyday?
Assuming the system determines how often to water.
It’s probably because of the shallow root setting you have. Also 0% soil moisture just means that the moisture in the soil has been depleted where the roots are. It doesn’t mean the soil is completely dried out.
Some of the other power users here can most likely explain it better than me. I only have mastered the zone settings and the flex program. I also stopped looking at the calendar view because I found that it wasn’t accurate; most likely because it only updates once a day.
I tend to use the soil moisture chart. I know on hot sunny days 90 degree whether we could see evaporation in the 18 or 17s. When irrigate it shows that I’m putting down .36, therefore on these hot days I know I will be irrigating about every other day. When it was cooler out the evap rate was about 12, which would take 2/3 days to then irrigate again. That to me seems like a reasonable amount of water based on weather. Keep in mind I’m speaking of cool season grass, I don’t have experience with warm season grasses. For us a typical water duration per zone could be anywhere of 15,20,30 minutes depending on flow, how many head, efficiency etc.
Do a catch cup to zero in on the nozzle inches per hour, this will help adjust your nozzle inches per hour. Previous years I was at default I have now knocked it down to .8 for rotors. I ordered catch cups and still have to do it but my current settings have resulted in so far the best year looking lawn; I think dynamic crop helped too!
My guess is something in the settings was changed between the first run and the second. I’d delete out the schedule, fix your zone settings and adv settings and re-create the schedule after that. Additionally don’t ever manually adjust the schedule durations. Do it using the advanced settings. Mainly by nozzle inches per hour
Maybe original setup was 9” roots and then you changed it to 4” that would alter the durations and frequency.
What kind of grass do you have ?
