New Setup - Converting from RainDial - Getting Started / Before You Buy - Rachio Community
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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 replace with the new ones. It’s an easy fix.
post by azdavidr on Oct 27, 2016
Here are a couple of links to back up @Modawg2k’s description. The Ewing guys will show you too.
DIY Sealing a Rip in Drip Tubing
Turning Pro
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 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 its 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 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 through 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 length, 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.
Efficiency: how efficiently does your zone put out the amount of water 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.
Coefficient: How fast does your plant use up water resources, it’ll default 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 notice shrubs have 0.5 vs trees of 0.75.
Some people say put a 1 for each emitter.