Hi, I set up a schedule on my rachio 3 under the flex daily setting with 7 zones and a run time of 10-15 mins per zone starting at 4 Am with smart cycle activated and weather intelligence on, no rain is scheduled for the next 2 days. I woke up today at 7:30 am and saw only one of my zones had run. I’m not sure what the reason for this is, all my zones work and I did a quick run yesterday. Any ideas?
When I initially set up the schedule Rachio recommended a run time of about 4 hours with some zones recommended to run as long as 58 mins which did not make sense as with my old none smart controller a 10-15 min run time had been more than adequate per zone. Is the run time that you set under the schedule a daily or weekly/monthly run time? Could this be why only one zone turned on?
Another thing I noticed when I go into my zones is that on most zones its saying next scheduled run of between August 12 and 16th while we are at August 5th today with no rain scheduled. Trying to understand the logic the system is using. Is it because I did a quick run recently to test each zone? Is it somehow factoring in the quick runs into the schedule?
UPDATE: The only work around I was able to find when fiddling with the app is to “empty fill” each zone that was showing a next run day of weeks away. By doing this the next run time shows 4 Am again. This seems counterintuitive if I have to do this every time. Ideas?
It may sound counter intuitive, but it is best to first set up one zone on Flex Daily, the rest on Fixed similar to how your old controller was set up. Then for the Flex Daily scheduled zone, learn about and work through the Advanced Zone Settings (such as nozzle inches per hour, soil available water) — you can ask for advice here based on the plants and irrigation system you have, if you like. Once that zone is dialed in, and you see how the Soil Moisture chart and table work and respond to your settings, then perhaps switch another zone or two from Fixed to Flex. Fixed schedules have lots of intelligence features so you’re getting full value out of your controller!
Note that every time you change a Flex Daily advanced zone setting the moisture chart will reflect the changes immediately and you can see when it’ll water based on environmental conditions and your settings.
I would reset the controller and start over. Be spot on with your soil types, sprinkler types, efficiencies, crop type, slope, sun exposure and weather station. Maybe there is a phantom schedule or something tweaky that only a reset can clear it.
