# rachio Watering



## berto (Mar 11, 2019)

How does it know how much water to put down a week ? Is that only done on the manual setting?


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## NeVs (Aug 17, 2018)

It doesnt calculate need on a per week basis.

My understanding is it formulates a water schedule, based on your input for grass root depth (your water storage tank), and the grasses water consumption + evaporation (weather).


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

^ That and soil type, shade/sun. So it is as smart as the inputs you feed Into the equation.


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## synergy0852 (Jun 30, 2018)

NeVs is correct it uses all that and more. I'm running the flex daily schedule on mine and if you go into your zone and then into soil moisture and click more detail you can see how many inches of water it will put down in a single run.


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## TonyC (May 17, 2018)

It does source local precipitation and many of the other factors mentioned previously to come up with a running balance of water. Based on thresholds, then it will Fill a given zone.


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## berto (Mar 11, 2019)

Is there a online log in ? Or all in the app? Guess I'm trying to figure out how long i should have it run.


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## synergy0852 (Jun 30, 2018)

You can login via the web portal or Android & Apple OS.


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## berto (Mar 11, 2019)

Ok I give up. Now I know I should know this answer but how do I know what size nozzle to run on my heads? Right now everything is 2.0. Should I just order the red tips from hunter ? I have i20 rotors.


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## synergy0852 (Jun 30, 2018)

I don't know if this is right or wrong but I personally used a 1.5gpm on my 90° rotors, 3gpm on my 180°, and 6gpm on the 1 360° I have. The company that did my install had 2gpm on most with some random 1 gpm thrown in and I assumed they just ran out of 2gpm. After I changed them all and did another irrigation audit my catch cups all had exactly the same amount of water in them so I figured i must be on to something. I wouldn't put too much weight on this as I'm no professional. Maybe some more knowledgeable people will chime in.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

@synergy0852 you did it correctly. The corners only move 90 degrees, so the rotor goes back and forth more often. The middle 360 needs to do a full revolution so it needs to spread more water.

Therefore the ratio should be 1 in the 360, 1/2 in the 180 and 1/4 in the corners. But the sum off all the rotors in a zone needs to be less than your max gpm available to your system. It takes pen and paper with a layout to do it correctly. Mp rotors make all this simple since they "self adjust" their rate.


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## HoosierLawnGnome (Sep 28, 2017)

I turned off the smart watering for mine. Even with it on inwas manually adjusting it constantly.


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## robertmehrer (Feb 28, 2019)

I'll start with never trust a smart watering feature of a auto smart timer. Do the work and figure it out yourself and set the timer accordingly.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I'm probably in the group that uses the smart feature and it works for me. But it took some time to fine tune it to work correctly. Used my own calculations of ET to verify and created custom nozzles profiles in the rachio.

I really think they should develop a soil probe for each zone and just use smart learning to trigger the zone based on moisture.


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## TN Hawkeye (May 7, 2018)

g-man said:


> I really think they should develop a soil probe for each zone and just use smart learning to trigger the zone based on moisture.


That's a really cool idea. I wonder if they could have it give you real time soil temps too.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

It is an old concept. Large farming operations have moisture probe that they use to assess when to water acres of corn.

Dwf_pilot has a soil probe system and he reports the moisture to his weather webpage.


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## stotea (Jul 31, 2017)

HoosierLawnGnome said:


> I turned off the smart watering for mine. Even with it on inwas manually adjusting it constantly.


Same here. I found it was generally watering too frequently no matter what settings I used. Also, I got really annoyed and frustrated with the system saying it was going to skip/delay watering only to find out the next morning it had changed its mind and watered anyway.


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