Load more posts above

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 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 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:

1. In the advanced, there are settings for Area, Root Depth, Allowed Depletion (i.e., 50%), Efficiency (90%) and Crop Coefficient (75%). Do I just leave these alone?
2. 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 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 set up 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.

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 set up 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 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.