New Setup - Converting from RainDial - Getting Started / Before You Buy - Rachio Community

Hi @jeremysm1 !

Super excited to have you join the team

Sounds about right if you are installing outside! The only thing I will say is getting a flow sensor is definitely optional. Depending on your needs, I would say there are probably some more cost and time effective ways to get accurate usage from your app. This community is excellent in helping with getting that done!

We also have a large group of Arizona users on here who are absolutely incredible when it comes to getting your system set up. Once you have gotten your controller up and running I recommend taking advantage of their knowledge when it comes to getting your settings fine tuned to your landscape!

McKynzee

post by Modawg2k on Oct 17, 2016

Welcome @jeremysm1. I’m in north phoenix. I have 5 zones on my system so I went with the 8 zone Rachio. Sounds like you should get the 8 zone system unless you have plans for any type of renovation of your irrigation system. Also you’ll want an enclosure if it’s outside. I’ve had my for 1 full summer facing the southern sun and it’s working great, so far no worries w/ heat as long as it’s within a box. And with flow sensors, I don’t personally have one so I can’t comment on that… I am just mindful of my yard and where I see water that shouldn’t be, I go hunting for a leak.

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 17, 2016

Thanks for the welcome messages! I ordered the Rachio and enclosure today but will hold off on adding the flow sensor after feeling out the system for a little while. I’m going to shoot for installation over the weekend–so keep an eye out for my frantic posts then.

post by Linn on Oct 18, 2016

Linn Rachio Power User

I hope you love your Rachio as much as I do, @jeremysm1! I also do not have a flow sensor. I may install one some time in the future as I travel a lot and can’t always monitor my yard. (And with all the traveling I do, I have been very pleased with how my yard looks when I get home, and that I can monitor what’s going on at home from anywhere in the world!)

I was gutsy and went with flex daily from the very start. It took a little bit of effort to understand it and set it up correctly to suit my specifics, but the time spent was well worth it. And the community will be happy to help you out.

Welcome!

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 20, 2016

Got the Rachio in the mail. Here is a pic of my current RainDial. Is this a simple unplug from here and plug into the Rachio setup?

\ 20161019_180205.jpg1344×2390 926 KB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/1/1659ca9ad94158e52b3c9efee8bf285203326256.jpg "20161019_180205.jpg")

Also, my electricity is piped into the RainDial on the right side, but needs to be on the left for the Rachio. Since it’s a flex cable, that should be easy enough. But I’m no electrical expert, is it the same cables/power for RainDial as the Rachio? I’m assuming that I just need to shut off the breaker box before playing with the electricity, right?

\ 20161014_114529.jpg2988×5312 2.4 MB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/b/b6af4833fdf23dba4f2b4cdb4c111ff54e5cdf0d.jpg "20161014_114529.jpg")

Lastly, my landscaper said he’d let me know the settings of the irrigation. But, I’m kinda doing this project because I don’t fully trust the settings that they are using. I went to the RainDial and simply moved the main dial around and marked down the following: Set for ON (Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs/Sat), Start time 1am, Station3 1hr, Station5 50 minutes. I didn’t check if B or C (top left)-does something live there?

\ 20161019_180450.jpg1344×2390 862 KB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/e/eeda3520b7aefc22acb154bb8d28cc1b1649af8d.jpg "20161019_180450.jpg")

Thanks for your help!

post by Modawg2k on Oct 21, 2016

@jeremysm1 I’m no electrician, no landscaper, and no Rachio employee, but I’ll try to help you as best as I can!

Your Irritrol controller and setup on the wall is as same as mine was. I converted to a Gen 1 Rachio… not sure what you got. But your zone wires on the bottom will just go into the appropriate zone plugins on the Rachio. The white wire is your “valve common” and I was told by Rachio support beore that it can be inserted into either white port labeled “C”.[quote=“jeremysm1, post:6, topic:6509”]

I’m assuming that I just need to shut off the breaker box before playing with the electricity, right?

[/quote]

Again, I’m not electrician but yeah I bought a box for my gen 1 that had an outlet in it and I just had to run the wires into the enclosure box and connect to the outlet (just like you would with wiring any outlets in the house). If you got the Gen 2, I’m not sure what the box has in it.

Those are just different schedules… but the point is mute because that dumb controller is gone! Dont’ worry about carrying over any settings from your Irritrol.

And you shouldn’t with most landscapers… but yeah, that’s the point of the Rachio. You can tell your landscaper to not worry about how your plants/grass gets watered, we’ll take care of that here He may just want to make sure you don’t water any grass on mowing days, that’s about all the input he should have with your watering.

Have you signed up on the app and did some initial setup of how many zones you have, etc?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 25, 2016

Got the Rachio gen 2 installed yesterday. Had to run to Home Depot to get some connectors so the outside case is connected to the feeder pipes properly. Today, I need to setup the programs. The great thing is that I don’t have lawn, just desert landscape. I’ll dig through the other Arizona threads…but if anyone wants to chime in with best practices for programmed times of dessert trees, shrubs, vines and sequencing (ie time of day, duration, and how many days per week to run the program) that will be just about all I need. Thanks!

post by mckynzee on Oct 25, 2016

@jeremysm1-

Welcome to the team! I’m sure some of our Arizona members will chime in- they are some of the best on here

Here are some of my favorite AZ threads… most of them are flex schedule focused, not sure if that’s what you are wanting to use!

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 25, 2016

I’m going to come clean, I have the faintest knowledge in landscaping but am ready to learn. In fact, I don’t even know anything about my landscape and/or system for irrigation. I did copy down the settings from the previous RainDial, but don’t know (yet) what method to the madness the irrigation uses. We built the house in 2007 and had brand new landscaping that included a backyard lawn. In spring 2015, we got rid of the lawn and replaced with artificial turf–so I’m sure that explains some of the inconsistencies in the irrigation (ie not using zone 1 for instance).

Also, I don’t know much about the plants/trees/shrubs nor do I know anything about the emitters, drip rates etc. I’m going to map out my yard and find every shrub, plant, vine, tree, cactus etc. and also mark down the type of emitters. I may need some help identifying the emitters, and will call in my landscaper to help identify each live plant/tree etc.

In the meantime, I don’t want them to die, so I’ll probably turn things on between now and when I get the info from the landscaper. I’ll try to post with my landscape findings soon and will hopefully inch my way towards setting the system up properly.

post by sunny on Oct 25, 2016

sunny Rachio Power User

Welcome, @jeremysm1. You will find this forum to be very helpful and the Arizona gang to be a great resource.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 25, 2016

jeremysm1](https://community.rachio.com/t/new-setup-converting-from-raindial/6509/2 "Load parent post")

YOu’ll learn as we go and probably enjoy it. First, are you all setup with the Rachio? I think you said that earlier, but just want to confirm that your Rachio is hooked up?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 25, 2016

Yes, got the Rachio setup outside and is online and ready for programming. I haven’t tried turning any zone on yet. Later today I will try to turn on each zone one at a time and see which areas are controlled in those areas.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 25, 2016

Awesome. That will take some time but having a remote in your hand (i.e. phone) vs having to walk to the box everytime will be a great time saver. From a settings stand point, let’s get your proper soil listed. Here is a great reference provided by @azdavidr

Getting the correct soil is vital to knowing how fast your ground will soak up the water and how long it’ll hold onto it. We tend to have sandy soil out here in the desert. Let us know what the AW is per the link.

post by azdavidr on Oct 25, 2016

http://www.amwua.org/calendar.html

A bit off topic, but I think most of the AZ folks are watching this thread. Here’s an update of the landscape watering classes some of you guys were talking about earlier. I noted one coming up at Agave Library, which I think is out by @Modawg2k and maybe a couple of others?

post by Modawg2k on Oct 26, 2016

Nice, yeah that’s just down the street from me around I17 and Pinnacle Peak.

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 26, 2016

My first test is complete, and the Rachio worked! I’m a little baffled that I actually got my system converted from the RainDial to the Rachio on the first try. Okay, so walking around the yard, turning on/off the zones one by one I found this to be the setup:

Zone 1, Zone 7, Zone 8: blank / not used / not wired (followed the RainDial setup for zones)

Zone 2: all of the bigger trees seem to be on this zone. Most have red emitters.

Zone 3: seems like everything in the backyard (except the bigger trees) are on this. Vines, bushes, shrubs, plants.

Zone 4: all I could find turning on is 1 emitter for a plant near the garbage cans.

Zone 5: the entire front of the house (except bigger trees)

Zone 6: all could find is 1 small 4ft tree in front…nothing else on this

I went online to this amazing site, http://www.amwua.org/plants/ , to identify the types of landscaping we have. Seems like we have an assortment of these: desert spoon, agave, slipper flower, golden barrel, cereus, mesquite, ironwood, palo brea, firecracker bush, green feathery senna, golden eye, lantana, grape ivy, goodings verbena, cherry red sage–at least that is my best guess until the landscaper comes to help identify.

HERE ARE MY QUESTIONS:

What time of the day should I set the system to water each zone (for simplicity, let’s say front yard, back yard and trees as the 3 zones)?
How many times per week should these zones each get water?
What type of emitters should be used for each? Assume most can be classified into 1-2 types of emitters (ie Shrubs or Trees)
How do I set this up in the Rachio so it knows how many emitters I have and/or how much water I’m using?

Thanks!

post by azdavidr on Oct 26, 2016

@jeremysm1 I encourage you to look at the ‘Water Use It Wisely’ site as a great orientation to how your drip zones should be configured, and how much and how often you should water your plants.

Once you do that, try out this post to see if it helps you set up your Rachio according to what you learned from 'Water Use It Wisely. Be sure not to skip any steps, especially dialing in your soil and root depth settings before using the calculator!

post by Modawg2k on Oct 27, 2016

jeremysm1](https://community.rachio.com/t/new-setup-converting-from-raindial/6509/2 "Load parent post")

@jeremysm1 Did you do the soil test online yet? I don’t remember seeing you post those.

A lot of your questiosn can be answered with having the appropriate settings

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 27, 2016

I went outside this morning to first see which plants actually have emitters and if any were broken. My findings upset me.

I only was able to look at the front of the house so far:

-4 broken emitters (spilling out water)

-many plants without water at all (will have to determine if they are xeriscape or not)

-1 crack in a big irrigation feeder hose.

Anyone know how to fix a cracked feeder hose? See picture. I’m planning on stopping by Ewing later today to start on some fixes.

\ 20161027_083101-min.jpg5312×2976 1.8 MB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/b/b56e5231fe242a41d16266be3c87c17676ce4e72.jpg "20161027_083101-min.jpg")

post by Modawg2k on Oct 27, 2016

You get a replacement line big enough for that section and a couple of connectors, and then splice out the bad part and and replace wtih the new ones. It’s an easy fix

post by azdavidr on Oct 27, 2016

http://www.sprinklerwarehouse.com/DIY-Sealing-a-rip-in-drip-tubing-s/6550.htm

Here are a couple of links to back up @Modawg2k’s description. The Ewing guys will show you too.

http://turning-pro.com/2010/12/28/452/

If your irrigation is greater than 5 years old, you might find that you’ll start playing whack-a-mole with these leaks. I’ve already had to completely replace my system in our front yard, and will have to do so again soon. I just went through a repair like this last weekend in my front yard. I ended up pulling a 6 foot section that had two leaks. When I pulled I found it had already been repaired with couplers 5 times! We just renovated our back yard last year and we put in a PVC based drip system there so we wouldn’t have to deal with this issue.

Good luck.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 27, 2016

My setup is about 6 years old and I had to repair the same general area about 4 times now in the past year.

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 28, 2016

The absolute best part of the Rachio system is that I can use the app on my phone to turn on a zone and start inspecting. Upon finding a broken emitter or one that needs to be plugged I can use the app to shut off the water, fix it, and turn it back on without running around to the other side of the house. That alone is worth it’s weight in gold!

I’m pretty sure that all the leaks are now fixed and the emitters are working correctly. I now need to figure out an irrigation plan. I checked out the Water It Wisely website but can’t believe that I should go so many days between watering cycles.

Can you guys share your watering cycle/setup? Thanks!

post by Modawg2k on Oct 28, 2016

What’s your soil AW from the link provided

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

Okay, I finally was able to go through that link in order to confirm/find the soil type. Here are the items that I think we’re looking for:

Momoli gravelly sandy loam, 1 to 5 percent slopes. Rating 0.08

Typical profile

A - 0 to 3 inches: gravelly sandy loam

Bw - 3 to 60 inches: very gravelly sandy loam

Please let me know your thoughts and next steps. Thanks!

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

So for Soil, you can set it to something like “Sandy Loam”, but then go into advanced settings and change your ‘Available Water’ (AW) to 0.08. The lower this number, the more sandy the soil is. Sandier soil allows water to flow thru it faster, but it also does not hold onto water as long as clay-type soils.

Next step, set your vegetation correctly, so if you have the one zone with all trees, set that one to trees. Your Zone 3 looks like all shrubs, so set that to shrubs. I would probably treat your zone 6 small tree as a shrub and water accordingly.

Next step is exposure… pretty self explanatory.

Any questions on those steps?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

Those settings make sense. I updated the zone setting accordingly. Some questions:

In the advanced, there are settings for Area, Root Depth, Allowed Depletion (ie 50%), Efficiency (90%) and Crop Coefficient (75%). Do I just leave these alone?
Regarding the Area from question above, how do I calculate? I’m assuming it’s generalizing the qty of emitters based on the area, is that right? I don’t have lawn, so everything is shrubs/vines/trees. How would I change that to reflect the amount of emitters?----- For instance: Zone 2, I have about 6 trees with 3 x 2gph emitters on each–how would I set that up?

Thanks!

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

Area: This has no impact on your watering and is used only by Rachio to give you an estimated amount of water used. To be honest, I wouldn’t even mess with this out of the box. Once you feel comfortable that your Rachio is watering your yard correctly, then you can play around with this setting.

Root Depth: This will default to the type of plant you have set for the zone. So if it’s a tree only zone, it’ll be one lenth, if it’s a shrub zone, it’ll be 15" i think. I would leave it for now on the default for whatever plant type you set… example: your shrub zone will default to 15", and Rachio will water to a depth of 15" every time.

Allowed Depletion: default is 50… basically it says that your Rachio will water when it thinks your soil is about 50% depleted of moisture…I believe Rachio uses this number because it’s been shown to have the best effect for plants… i keep mine at 50.

Effeciency: how effecient is your zone at putting the amount of water out that it says it is… not as big of a deal with drips (used more for sprinklers), I’d just keep it at 100 since your drops are appropriately placed at the plant.

Coeffeicient: How fast does your plant use up water resources, it’ll deafult based off the plant setting… again, i’d leave it alone assuming you have the correct plant setting, you can tweak it once you get a feel for the system. You’ll noticed shrubs have 0.5 vs treets of 0.75.

Some people say put a 1 for each emitter.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

jeremysm1](https://community.rachio.com/t/new-setup-converting-from-raindial/6509/2 "Load parent post")

@jeremysm1 For weather, you’ll want to make sure you are connecting to a station that is using correct information. What station are you connecting to?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

Thanks for the info on those settings–I made the adjustments. As for the weather station, I’m 3.6 miles from the nearest one in Scottsdale (KSDL) which sounds good to me.

As it stands, none of my watering is scheduled–it’s all manual. What’s the best practice for setting up schedules? I found a local Phoenix area nursery’s website with some generalizations on watering, see here: http://www.elginnursery.com/hints.php

What’s baffling my mind is that my schedule was for 50min-60min 5-6 days per week whereas all the recommendations that I found online seem to say something like once per week or even once per every two weeks. I have typical desert landscaping for the most part.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

Perfect, airports are great. I’m about 4 miles from Deer Valley, but I’ve started using a neighbor’s personal weather station once I was familiar w/ the Rachio and better understood everything.

You are definitely overwatering. Plants benefit from longer run times, and infrequent waterings. This promotes strong root growth while conserving water. When you overwater, your roots stay shallow towards the surface, and are more suseptible to drought, etc. My shrubs are currently watering for about an hour every 8 days with our temps hanging out around the 90’s.

Since you are watering so much, I would honestly just switch over to the flex daily schedule and let it do it’s thing. You aren’t doing this middle of teh summer so it’s not like your plants are going to suffer too much, but there may be a bit of a shock from them when you take their training wheels off from the overwatering.

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

What does the flex daily schedule do / how does it work? And, more importantly, how do I turn it on? I’m still discovering areas of the app. Thx

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

first have your zones setup, are you done with that?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

Yes, all the zones are setup.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

Nice, one last thing I forgot before setting up your schedules… what are you using for your nozzles right now? Just the default “Emitter”?

post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016

Most of the emitters are .5gph I believe, some are 1gph but honestly most of my foliage is ground cover stuff. The zone with just the trees use a 2gph red emitter and I created it and used it as such.

post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016

Ok, the last thing you need to think about in your settings is the nozzle type. If you selected the “Emitter” from the default list, you’ll see that it’ll water 0.5 inches per hour. Unfortunately there is no clear number to select based off your emitters’ GPH. And obviously your 0.5 GPH will put out far less than your 2 GPH… but you are also watering to a greater depth with your 2GPH for your trees… again, no clear answers @azdavidr setup another great reference to play around with your custom nozzle settings once you are familiar with things

I think your best bet is to leave the Emitter setting at the default 0.5 and you can play around w/ that later.

Do you want to test out the Flex daily with just 1 zone vs putting them all on the schedule right away? Some people like doing a test sample

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 1, 2016

Can you describe the Flex Daily setting? Does it take into account my weather, season, and water requirements based on the settings we setup for each zone? Do you know when it’s scheduled to water and for how much or do you just read the logs? Thanks!

post by Modawg2k on Nov 1, 2016

http://support.rachio.com/article/382-flex-schedule-faq

If you haven’t checked out the support docs, give them a once over. I think Rachio did a good job of making them user friendly.

That is what Flex daily is best at. It’ll account for weather conditions and adjust. So if the airport/weather station you are using gets 0.25" of rain, it’ll add 0.25" of water to your moisture balance without physically watering the yard. If it’s 10 degrees cooler one day, it’ll account for that by decreasing the amount of moisture that was used up by the plant. There is a cool feature called the moisture graph that’ll paint a nice picture of what’s happened/going to happen in your zone once you setup the Flex daily schedule.

You can see when your system will water next in several areas. The calendar will show you, the moisture graph (if you are using flex daily), and in the My Yard section, each zone will say when it’ll water next.

post by mckynzee on Nov 1, 2016

Hey @jeremysm1!

Jumping in here to drop some Flex knowledge. Flex, in my opinion, is how to really take advantage of your controller. The main key to getting it to work for you is to get your zone settings as close to perfect as possible, which you have already done, so you are all set there.

Flex runs off of this idea of Managed Allowed Depletion (MAD). Easiest way to think about it is a gas tank. It watches each zones “gas tank” and once it reaches a certain level (this is defined by your MAD setting) it refills the tank to the top. This promotes deep root growth and creates drought tolerant plants, basically it’s the correct way to water. It uses your zone settings to determine how much “gas” (moisture) your zones are using up each day, and it looks at past and future weather to see if there is precipitation that will help refill the tank. Each zone is handled independently, so if one is running low but all the others are fine, it is the only one that will be watered.

Flex does show future watering days, however it is important to note that these days can change with weather! If consistent watering days are necessary for you it probably isn’t the best option. The duration for each zone will be the same every time it waters.

Warnings for when you first set up: In the beginning flex wants to make sure your tank is full, so it may seem like it overwaters right off the bat. Don’t let it scare you! Also, the calendar can be misleading. It can say it is watering every day, but that is because zones can run independently of each other! Don’t let that rain drop make you think you are watering your whole system that often. Last thing is durations may seem long, but this is because flex changes the way you water. Times should be longer but less often!

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 1, 2016

Thanks! Flex sounds like the ideal solution. I have a couple more questions:

How do I turn Flex on?
I have 2 zones that apparently only have 1 plant on them a piece. For the life of me, I can’t find the plants on these 2 zones. Should I still set this to Flex? Should I setup the emitters as .5gph, 10 inch roots, and 50 sq/ft so it doesn’t overwater–or do you think I should somehow retire these zones and/or shut them off (maybe pop into a nearby line from another zone)?

Thanks!

post by mckynzee on Nov 1, 2016

You turn flex on by creating a Flex schedule! Check out this article for better instructions: http://support.rachio.com/article/404-create-a-flex-schedule. As for the two zones with one plant, that is really strange. In my opinion, you can absolutely still put them on flex, however for your questions on setup I may defer to @Modawg2k or @azdavidr. Is there only one emitter in each of these zones?

post by azdavidr on Nov 1, 2016

My vote would be to get them on another line. I’ve read that if the flow rate of a zone is too low, the associated valve may not turn on and off properly. I might be having that problem myself, which is why I’ve read up on it. If nothing else, it reduces your maintenance overhead for both managing schedules and dealing with a worn valve in the future.

post by Modawg2k on Nov 1, 2016

Yeah, 1 plant… 30 plants, doesn’t matter.

Referring to what i mentioned earlier, i would just keep it at default drips as “Emitters”, you can do 10" roots if you want, that’s a bit shallow, but your plants have been trained to be shallow… over time increase it to 15"; and doesn’t matter about sq feet, it has no impact on how much water the Rachio will put out, it’s used purely as an estimated number of how many gallons your Rachio used… 50sq ft would be an overestimate for 1 shrub

If you don’t mind doing the work, it’ll reduce the risk of leaks since you are decreasing the number of used lines out there.

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 1, 2016

Thanks! I just setup the Flex Daily watering schedule. The hard part was finding that area of the app (Edit Water Schedule, then clicking on the plus icon on the top right)–that was tricky as I kept overlooking that plus sign! I setup the time to start at 6am, that way I can visually see it in progress on mornings (when I remember) and spot leaks or problems before I leave for the gym or work.

I’m going to further troubleshoot my zone4 and zone6 to see if I can find what’s on those segments. My hope is to end up turning those zones off altogether leaving me with 3 zones (bigger trees, front yard, back yard). I’m guessing the next step also is to track the measurement of water via the Rachio app versus actual usage on the city meter.

Thanks!

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 4, 2016

Question: believe it or not it rained pretty hard and long here in Scottsdale last night. I have the flex daily schedule setup and it seems like it knew to push the watering schedule back several days. How can I check that it actually did that? Also, how do I check how much rain the local weather station received? I just want to see how to make sense of it all. Thanks!

post by Modawg2k on Nov 4, 2016

Go to a zone, click on the moisture graph, and you’ll see the graph on November 3rd reflect a slight increase due to rain. Hit the More Detail button and you’ll see how much it accounted for preciptation. My system accounted for 0.24 inches yesterday.

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 4, 2016

Very neat! Here is a screenshot of mine. Got .18 inches of rain. What is the moisture balance supposed to be at? At what amount will rainfall affect the schedule?

\ Rachio Moisture after rain on Nov 3.JPG945×631 50.7 KB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/1/1a8dda854f96ecdff6aaef5f106ac6e0014457f3.JPG "Rachio Moisture after rain on Nov 3.JPG")

post by Modawg2k on Nov 4, 2016

When your level drops to the “Allowed Depletion” line, the system will water. You can follow the math easily with the details expanded like you have in the screen shot. Basically you start out with the day’s (we’ll use yesterday the 3rd) current soil moisture level, your soil was at 0.48inches…, you didn’t add any Irrigation (which would add to your moisture level) , but it did rain (0.18in added to your moisture level)… then you minus off how much water is used by the plant and environment (Crop Evatranspiration, 0.11 inches… this number will be much higher when it’s hot out vs cold days). and the final day’s Moisture Balance is a the bottom, which is then carried over to the next day’s top number.

Click the arrow next to the Nov 4th at the top and you’ll see the watering predictions for the next 7 days based off weather forecast

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 4, 2016

That is so cool! Thanks for explaining. Here is a screenshot of the next watering time for that zone—seems like my system is setup and operating as it’s supposed to.

\ Rachio Moisture after rain on Nov 3 Next Water.JPG940×482 27.2 KB](https://community.rachio.com/uploads/db1097/original/2X/2/2d559b29f928fc58710bd9a9f29b208d7bf263c3.JPG "Rachio Moisture after rain on Nov 3 Next Water.JPG")

post by Modawg2k on Nov 4, 2016

Your graph along with watering amount (0.55) look pretty consistent with what I’m seeing on my setup here in North Phoenix so I would say you are looking good. Once you starting seeing how the system works like this, then you can get into tweaking like perhaps makea custom nozzle for each zone, etc.

17 days later

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 21, 2016

So far, nothing seems to be dying and the watering schedule seems to be working! I still haven’t had time to start hunting for those little used zones, but that’s on my list. Here is my newest focus: when logged into the Rachio app (or web page) I can see how much water we used in the last month. How is that figure being calculated? For instance, I never told the system how many emitters we have per line. I know someone suggested turning off all water sources in the house, and turn one zone on at a time and make a note of the city’s water meter at start/stop of a cycle to know for sure how much water it uses.

But how do we get the Rachio to be programmed so it displays about the right amount on that dashboard? Thanks!

post by rbeck on Nov 21, 2016

rbeck

The amount of water is figured as rate of nozzle (e.g., 0.5"/hr) multiplied by the time run and by the area for the zone. For example, 0.5"/hr x 1 hr x 12000 sq ft gives 500 cu ft (3740 gallons).

post by jeremysm1 on Nov 21, 2016

I have some follow up questions:

How did you go from 12,000 sq/ft to 500 cu/ft? I can find a cubic feet to gallons calculator but have no clue how you got to 500 cu/ft? My front yard zone is like 2000s/ft for instance.
Most of my watering is soley for plants and not grass. So the area calculation above couldn’t be accurate. I am covering 2000 sq/ft for instance, but may just have 30 desert plants on it. In the back I might cover 2000 sq/ft but have 100 plants on it. (all with say .5 gallon emitters)

Would be great if there was way to simply count the emitters and their gallons and plug that figure into the Rachio manually. In the meantime, is there a conversion to use? For example, 30 x .50 gallon/hr emitters on a zone would equate to how many sq/ft?

post by rbeck on Nov 21, 2016

rbeck

0.5"/hr * 1 hr equals 0.5" (or 0.5/12 feet) water depth times 12,000 sq ft yields 500 cu ft.
Rachio uses the area you input and the watering rate in in/hr. This is something folks on drip systems have to back figure for the gallons used to approximate the actual. For people on sprinker heads (like me), get the rate, efficiency and area right, and the gallons will be close.

Your magic formula works out to be:

Area = total rate (gal/hr) * 12 / [emitter rate (in/hr) * 7.48]

If you have 30 0.5 gal/hr emitters and the default 0.5"/hr, the formula becomes

Area = 15 *12 / (0.5 * 7.48) = 2692.8 sq ft. (You can check my numbers using my prior example.)

post by mckynzee on Nov 21, 2016