# How do the Tier 3 folks use their Rachios?



## BarakaRS (Jun 23, 2018)

Hey everyone. I am curious how folks use their Rachios when trying to achieve or even maintain a tier 3 lawn?

Now I don't want to get ahead of myself and suggest that I have a tier 3 lawn because currently I don't, but that is something I would love to get to some day.

So you folks set fixed schedules on your Rachios or do you use the Flex Daily schedule after getting your zones dialed in? I'm just curious if the Flex Daily schedules merely keep the lawn green or does the "Max Allowed Depletion irrigation model" actually create conditions that can help Drive deep healthy roots.

I have purchased my first Rachio (Gen 3), but with the prevailing knowledge that is best to water 1 inch per week spread out over a couple waterings, are the other scheduling options really necessary? Curious about everyone's opinion on this.

Thanks in advance!


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I've been using the flex schedule for a while. I do also track my ET independently and I cross check the rachio. Overall once it is setup correctly, it matches what I would do. I change my Max allowed and crop coefficient thru the year (I wish the do this automatically). In spring/fall I set to 1.0 and. 60%. In summer I set to 0.85 and 50%.

One thing that doesn't work great (not rachio fault), precipitation is based on the station it uses and with pop up showers it will be different than your yard. I wish there was a way to manually tweak the numbers.

Edit: I'm not at tier 3 either, but good water management helps our lawns.


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## BarakaRS (Jun 23, 2018)

Thanks @g-man! I'm still learning how the advanced settings work. I think I have it dialed in more now that before for the most part. (I ran a catch cup test and so forth.) But you have me wondering if I should use your seasonal summer settings at this time too. I'm only a little further north in west Michigan with the cool season lawn. Any thoughts on that?

The one thing I struggle with (that I know of since im still learning) is the crop coefficient setting. I need to understand that concept better as it relates to irrigation and my Rachio and ultimately the lawn.

Thanks for the support as always. This site is my favorite to peruse with my morning coffee.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I recommend reading this article and rachio help. It aids understanding the concepts.

ETo is determined for the use of all crops (corn, soy, grass, etc). The coefficient is used to relate it to the crop you are growing. For cool season lawns, 0.85 is the yearly average. When the calculations were done by hand (before computers), it helps to use a yearly value.

But the reality is much different. In spring and fall, the lawn is very active growing and using water. In the summer, it grows less. Since most of us (TLF members) want the best lawn possible, we also apply more nitrogen than the normal. I think (option based on my assumptions) that we go above 1.0 in the may, fall. Therefore I think it should be adjusted thru the season.

I like to push my lawn a bit in the spring/fall to encourage the roots to go deeper, so I use 60% allowed depletion. Summer it is a different story. My soil is heavy clay, and once it dries it becomes concrete. Therefore I tweak to 50 and even 40% (this triggers shorter more frequent). I'm all about survival in the summer and not root development.

Last item, all these are great practices used by farmers for years, but your eyes are a better control. Keep an eye on things and don't hesitate to manually trigger a cycle if needed.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Here is a table for crop values by month for lawns in california.  Crop factors


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## BarakaRS (Jun 23, 2018)

Thanks @g-man. That is exactly the type of information I was looking for.
I was grasping the overall concept of the depletion model, but the overall way to implement the model in my personal situation was the part I was struggling with and I suspected that once I knew how the sausage was made (so to speak) I would be much better off in setting up my mostly shady Lawn. I just didn't want to water too frequently and have shallow roots which I understand is easy to do in a shady environment. Not to mention provoking fungus and the like. Either way this is my first year with this lawn and I've learned quite a bit. I'm going to do a heavy overseed in the fall and really hit the ground running in 2019. 

Thanks again!!


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

Have either of you had issues with the lawn being wet throughout they entire day? My back lawn will stay wet pretty much the entire day after the Rachio does it's watering, which I think is causing my endless fungus battle. The lawn gets 8 plus hours of sun and even when it's 95 out it stays wet. It's watering about every other day for two 30 minute cycles per station. Sprinklers are all hunter mp's at .42in per hour. Watering starts around 3 am and is always done by 6am or earlier.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Not for me. Have you done an precipitation test? Did you adjust the settings to match?


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## stotea (Jul 31, 2017)

Areas of my lawn stay wet all day long sometimes, but it's done that forever. So it's not the Rachio's fault in my case. Seems odd if your lawn only does it with the Rachio.


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

g-man said:


> Not for me. Have you done an precipitation test? Did you adjust the settings to match?


I have not done the test. Never even heard of it. What's the process?


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

stotea said:


> Areas of my lawn stay wet all day long sometimes, but it's done that forever. So it's not the Rachio's fault in my case. Seems odd if your lawn only does it with the Rachio.


Obviously in the winter time with big storms it would get saturated but I'm just wondering if Rachio is watering for too long per day. It's putting down about 1.25" of water per week which is probably right. It's been really hot so far this summer


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@rrmiller32 It involves placing multiple catch cups (tuna can, or anything with straight walls or some items sold just for this) all within a zone. Run the irrigation for 30min or 1hr and then go measure the inches in each cup. In an ideal scenario, all cups have the same amount. Calculate the average in/hr and configure the rachio zone to that number. Repeat for each zone.

Also, what are you other settings? I keep root depth to 6.0in, 50% allowed depletion, sunny/shade as needed.


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

g-man said:



> @rrmiller32 It involves placing multiple catch cups (tuna can, or anything with straight walls or some items sold just for this) all within a zone. Run the irrigation for 30min or 1hr and then go measure the inches in each cup. In an ideal scenario, all cups have the same amount. Calculate the average in/hr and configure the rachio zone to that number. Repeat for each zone.
> 
> Also, what are you other settings? I keep root depth to 6.0in, 50% allowed depletion, sunny/shade as needed.


I must have been half asleep when I read this. For some reason I had "evaporation" test in my head. I did a fairly crude precipitation test in the spring and the numbers we pretty close to what Hunter listed for these nozzles. I might be at .48" instead of .42" in some areas but that shouldn't be the difference in soaked all day.

Settings are as follows: Available water: 0.16 (no clue what this is) root depth 6in, allowed depletion 40%, efficiency 80%, crop coefficient 80%. I even up'd the nozzle inches per hour to 0.55" hoping it would lower the watering time. Soil type, Silty Clay, Lots of sun, flat slope.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

If you have proper head to head coverage and an even distribution, you could up the efficiency to 90 or 95%. Change the slope to moderate. That will add some Soak time between zones to allow the water to absorb. Changing the allowable depletion to 50 or 60% will increase the inch of waters when it runs, but decrease how often it waters (it might be helpful for fungus). Have you tried the baby shampoo or other similar soil surfactant method?

FYI, available water is a setting that determines how much water your soil (silty clay) could hold per inch of depth (0.16 * 6in = 1in of water). With an allowable depletion of 40%, that means that once the ET reaches 0.4in (0.4 * 1in) it will trigger an irrigation. On a hot sunny day, ET could be 0.21-0.22. Therefore your rachio setup is to water every ~2 days for ~1hr per zone.


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

g-man said:


> If you have proper head to head coverage and an even distribution, you could up the efficiency to 90 or 95%. Change the slope to moderate. That will add some Soak time between zones to allow the water to absorb. Changing the allowable depletion to 50 or 60% will increase the inch of waters when it runs, but decrease how often it waters (it might be helpful for fungus). Have you tried the baby shampoo or other similar soil surfactant method?
> 
> FYI, available water is a setting that determines how much water your soil (silty clay) could hold per inch of depth (0.16 * 6in = 1in of water). With an allowable depletion of 40%, that means that once the ET reaches 0.4in (0.4 * 1in) it will trigger an irrigation. On a hot sunny day, ET could be 0.21-0.22. Therefore your rachio setup is to water every ~2 days for ~1hr per zone.


I changed the efficiency to 90% and the slope. I don't think I want to change the depletion rate. Longer running time will just create more run off. (there's a lot of that in the slight sloping I do have) I've applied 2 rounds of southern Ag's surfactant with Humic, fungicide and insecticide. Is there something else specific for soil?


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@rrmiller32 I just re-read your entire journal. I think your best course of action is to turn off the rachio flex schedule for now. Some of the things I'm thinking of are an uneven soil profile where a deeper layer is not absorbing the water and the water sits on top. Or your roots are not at the 6in level yet.

I suggest you go manual. Use your eyes and when you see the lawn start to turn gray green that means it needs a cycle. Trigger a night cycle for 1.2hr/zone (~0.5in) and see 1) how long it takes to absorb the water in the am 2) how many days your could go before it turns gray/green again.

One last thing that I want to ask. When you tested the precipitation rate, do you have overlapping zones (two zone water the same lawn area)? if so, did you accounted for both zone duration in your calculations?


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

g-man said:


> @rrmiller32 I just re-read your entire journal. I think your best course of action is to turn off the rachio flex schedule for now. Some of the things I'm thinking of are an uneven soil profile where a deeper layer is not absorbing the water and the water sits on top. Or your roots are not at the 6in level yet.
> 
> I suggest you go manual. Use your eyes and when you see the lawn start to turn gray green that means it needs a cycle. Trigger a night cycle for 1.2hr/zone (~0.5in) and see 1) how long it takes to absorb the water in the am 2) how many days your could go before it turns gray/green again.
> 
> One last thing that I want to ask. When you tested the precipitation rate, do you have overlapping zones (two zone water the same lawn area)? if so, did you accounted for both zone duration in your calculations?


I'll give that try. I know for a fact that the soil profile is not even and the roots are not 6". They are at best 3-4" unfortunately. I put down a ton of topsoil before laying down the sod. So after the first 6 inches the soil becomes much more compact and percs much slower. When I ran the precipitation test I set out containers over the entire lawn and ran the 2 zones before collecting. Each zone ran for 30 minutes and gave me roughly 0.20" to .25:" per container, including the overlapped areas. The good news is the lawn has not shown much, if any, signs of heat stress. Just fungus issues that I was late to prepare for


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

After changing those settings Rachio turned down the watering times to 21 minutes per zone. We'll see if that helps at all. It looked pretty soaked this morning but in all fairness the sprinklers turned off about 20 minutes before I woke up


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

:thumbup:


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## psider25 (May 4, 2020)

g-man said:


> @rrmiller32 I just re-read your entire journal.
> 
> One last thing that I want to ask. When you tested the precipitation rate, do you have overlapping zones (two zone water the same lawn area)? if so, did you accounted for both zone duration in your calculations?


Doing some research to setup my Rachio 3 for flex daily ....and dug up this old post. One thing I am having the hardest time trying to turn theory into reality is how to determine the precip rates when your setup has A LOT of zones. Which seems to be mentioned here but not explicitly discussed.

I designed my system for a max flow rate of about 9 GPM so had to split it up into quite a few zones and depending on design may have used different nozzles between the zones. Staying under the 9GPM I did my best to split things up between shade and sun while also balancing too many zones.

@g-man or others ....any insight in how to calc the precip rate when the overlap is between zones (to complicate further sometimes between the overlapping zone one is full sun while part of the other gets some shade) ?


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## psider25 (May 4, 2020)

Forgot my design .....


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## spaceman_spiff (Feb 5, 2021)

You should really do a catch cup test to determine your precipitation rates and efficiency. That number completely depends on the uniform water distribution of your nozzles. After your catch cup test, put your cup data in on this site and it'll do the calculation for you:
https://wateringschedule.com/get-started/#/stations

I use 10 cups and I use the average of the 10 to determine the precipitation rate I input into Rachio's advanced zone settings. Updating your efficiency will adjust your zone runtime to get those less-watered sections a little more water.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Run an audit with catch cups in each zone and the in between zones.

The efficiency calculation is good if the distribution is pretty good, but if you have a catch cup at 1in and one at 0.1in, dont use an average. Try to fix your system first, if you cant, then use the lowest.


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## psider25 (May 4, 2020)

Thanks @spaceman_spiff and @g-man

Do you all know if the shade setting changes any of the parameters exposed in advanced settings or if it is part of a behind the scenes calculation? Ie if I change something in advanced settings does it override the shade parameter I choose?


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Shade affects the ET calculations for uv light. It happens behind the scenes. In a mix zone, pick the sunny vs shade. Better to overeater than under.


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

@psider25 Another option with that much overlap in zones is to treat them as one big zone for the audit. As long as you are aiming for the same precipitation rate from each zone in your setup (or if you have MP rotators which have the same precipitation rate), you would lay out the catch cans and run the black, pink, yellow, and red zones for 30 minutes each. That will allow each zone to properly overlap with the adjacent zone and give you an accurate precipitation rate. Use the same settings for all three zones in the controller for precipitation rates.

You would do the same thing for the other side of the house in the green, blue, orange, teal, and black zones. You want to make sure that if you have a catch can, all the heads that cover it would run for 30 minutes.


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## psider25 (May 4, 2020)

g-man said:


> Shade affects the ET calculations for uv light. It happens behind the scenes. In a mix zone, pick the sunny vs shade. Better to overeater than under.


Oh man.... I'm getting very afraid of the water bill :shock:

Really don't understand how my water in Illinois is more than double the water bill rate in the New Mexico desert... but that's another whole post


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

I really don't use any of the advanced features on my Rachio 2. I do like the connivence of being able to turn it on from my phone or computer which is basically what I do. I pretty much let my lawn tell me when it needs watering instead of letting a program figure it out. I did that one year after I first got it and it was watering way too much no matter what settings I had. I may revisit it again sometime in the near future as I am retweaking my irrigation system anyway but once I get it all dialed in I may give it another shot with the Rachio.

I did purchase a bunch of these Sprinkler Gauges awhile back that I use to tune my system. Looks like the price went up on them quite a bit from when I purchased them.

Just checked and they use to be $1.50 each now they are $3.50 each I have no idea why the over doubling in price!!!


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## spaceman_spiff (Feb 5, 2021)

Mightyquinn said:


> I really don't use any of the advanced features on my Rachio 2. I do like the connivence of being able to turn it on from my phone or computer which is basically what I do. I pretty much let my lawn tell me when it needs watering instead of letting a program figure it out. I did that one year after I first got it and it was watering way too much no matter what settings I had. I may revisit it again sometime in the near future as I am retweaking my irrigation system anyway but once I get it all dialed in I may give it another shot with the Rachio.
> 
> I did purchase a bunch of these Sprinkler Gauges awhile back that I use to tune my system. Looks like the price went up on them quite a bit from when I purchased them.
> 
> Just checked and they use to be $1.50 each now they are $3.50 each I have no idea why the over doubling in price!!!


A 10-pack on Amazon is only $21.

And if you buy these, the throat area is 1.891 sq in for your mL calculations.


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