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 and replace wtih 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.
- http://www.sprinklerwarehouse.com/DIY-Sealing-a-rip-in-drip-tubing-s/6550.htm
- 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 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 efficient 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.
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.
post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016
@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 susceptible 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 its thing. You aren’t doing this middle of the 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 set up 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 with 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
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.
http://support.rachio.com/article/382-flex-schedule-faq
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 precipitation. 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?
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 screenshot. 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 at 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.
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 make a custom nozzle for each zone, etc.
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
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 solely 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 a 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
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 sprinkler 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
@jeremysm1 If you want to improve this calculation, @azdavidr created this calculator that should help!