Using Web Soil Survey to define your soil settings - Schedules & Zones / Set Up & Edit Zones - Rachio Community
Using Web Soil Survey to define your soil settings
I found through my own experience that setting an incorrect soil type can have a dramatic impact on the watering duration and frequency of flex schedules. I’d lived in my home for 22 years and always assumed we had a lot of clay in our desert soil. Through these forums I found that was not the case, and instead we have sandy loam. Changing that setting really had a big impact on my scheduling.
Finding out your soil type can be confusing, but I personally found the USDA Web Soil Survey site to be incredibly helpful. The first few times through it wasn’t intuitively obvious how to find all of the information that I needed. The document that I put together here is an attempt to make it easier for new users. Please let me know if there are mistakes and I’ll try to keep this post up to date with the latest instructions.
I hope this helps !
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE:
Web Soil Survey Instructions for Rachio Iro
- Moisture Level Inconsistencies
- Where to start on Flex Daily
- This Is How You Need To Water Your Lawn
- Questions about the Rachio 3
- What Soil Type in Rachio is CeB2—Cecil sandy clay loam?
Additional Replies
Post by sunny on Aug 28, 2016
Great job, @azdavidr!!
Post by Modawg2k on Aug 28, 2016
That’s a great guide @azdavidr They definitely need to find a way to pin the information.
Post by azdavidr on Aug 29, 2016
I’m glad you found the guide helpful! Your situation is way more complex than mine. Honestly, I’m not sure what I’d do. You can always have soil testing performed where they test AW, but there’s the associated expense, which would be increased in your case if you were getting multiple samples analyzed...
Post by dsnj on Sep 15, 2016
This is a fantastic guide. I spotted it the day you posted and discovered that while I had correctly determined my soil type, I had to change my Available Water setting from 0.17 to 0.13 according to the USGS survey. This seems to have made a noticeable difference to my watering times and I’m much more confident that my system is making better calculations based on more accurate data now.
Post by azdavidr on May 7, 2018
Hey @Trebacz, I’m really glad that you found the guide useful, and it was nice to meet you as well. Thanks for the nice comments about the guide! Welcome to the user community. Be sure to post with any issues you might be having, and/or any successes as well!
Post by Noonan on Jun 28, 2018
Thank you for posting this. This forum is very helpful, which is one of the reasons I recently installed a Rachio v3. My run times are 43 minutes per station (flex daily), where they were 20 minutes per station three times a week with my prior non-Rachio controller.
Now I’ve got to run the spreadsheet on my catch cup tests with 113 measurements. What did I get myself into!
Post by gizbug on May 30, 2019
I’m in a fairly new subdivision. My house was built last July, and my landscaping put in last fall...
Post by tmcgahey on Aug 15, 2019
I would tend to say no. Stony soils would be more free-draining, the exact opposite of clay.
Post by beranes on May 25, 2021
Just came across an Android app called SoilWeb. It apparently uses GPS to pull info out of the soil survey making the entire process much easier.
Additional Information
For detailed guidance and personalized assistance, refer to the specific links in the replies and utilize the Web Soil Survey to identify your soil type accurately.