New Setup - Converting from RainDial - Getting Started / Before You Buy - Rachio Community
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post by Modawg2k on Oct 27, 2016
Modawg2k
You get a replacement line big enough for that section and a couple of connectors, and then splice out the bad part and then replace with the new ones. It’s an easy fix
post by azdavidr on Oct 27, 2016
azdavidr Rachio Power User
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 27, 2016
Modawg2k
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
jeremysm1
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!
Can you guys share your watering cycle/setup? Thanks!
post by Modawg2k on Oct 28, 2016
Modawg2k
What’s your soil AW from the link provided
post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016
jeremysm1
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
Modawg2k
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.
post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016
jeremysm1
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?
post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016
Modawg2k
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.
post by jeremysm1 on Oct 31, 2016
jeremysm1
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 uses a 2gph red emitter and I created it and used it as such.
post by Modawg2k on Oct 31, 2016
Modawg2k
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 in the 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
jeremysm1
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
Modawg2k
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 set up the Flex daily schedule.
post by mckynzee on Nov 1, 2016
mckynzee
Flex runs off of this idea of Managed Allowed Depletion (MAD). Easiest way to think about it is a gas tank. It watches each zone’s "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.
post by jeremysm1 on Nov 1, 2016
jeremysm1
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 set up 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)?
post by mckynzee on Nov 1, 2016
mckynzee
You turn flex on by creating a Flex schedule! Check out this article for better instructions: 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
azdavidr Rachio Power User
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
Modawg2k
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 gallons your Rachio used… 50sq ft would be an overestimate for 1 shrub.
post by jeremysm1 on Nov 1, 2016
jeremysm1
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.
post by jeremysm1 on Nov 4, 2016
jeremysm1
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
Modawg2k
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
jeremysm1
Very neat! Here is a screenshot of mine. Got .18 inches of rain. What is the moisture balance supposed to be? At what amount will rainfall affect the schedule?
post by Modawg2k on Nov 4, 2016
Modawg2k
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 0.48 inches, you didn’t add any Irrigation, 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).
post by jeremysm1 on Nov 21, 2016
jeremysm1
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 the start/stop of a cycle to know for sure how much water it uses.
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
jeremysm1
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)
post by rbeck on Nov 21, 2016
rbeck
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 = 1512 / (0.57.48) = 2692.8 sq ft.
post by mckynzee on Nov 21, 2016
mckynzee
If you want to improve this calculation, @azdavidr created this calculator that should help!