# Rachio Problems?



## Crabbychas (Apr 25, 2018)

Has anyone else noticed any issues with their Rachio watering after getting significant amounts of rain? Down in the panhandle it's been raining just about every day for a week and a half-ish and I've woken up 3 times to find my rachio decided that it needed to turn on the irrigation system. I have it set properly to adjust for rainfall, and it knows that I'm getting rain because the alerts I'm getting are that it decided not to skip like it had planned to.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

The settings around root depth, soil profile, allowed depletion, grass type, inches of rain measured, all account into when it waters.

To check, go to a zone, then go to soil moisture. This will have a graph showing what it thinks your soil moisture is. You can then go to the details and see how rain inches is it recorded and how much it thinks the lawn is using.


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## Crabbychas (Apr 25, 2018)

That's the issue, it's not taking into account the rain I'm getting. When I look at the details it's showing 0 inches gained from precipitation even though we got drenched yesterday, an inch and a half of rain in about 30 minutes.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Check your weather station settings. Is the station selected close enough? Is it reporting rain data correctly?


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## Crabbychas (Apr 25, 2018)

Damn, didn't even think about that. Apparently the weather station is down or something and not reporting any data.


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## dfw_pilot (Jan 28, 2017)

g-man said:


> Is the station selected close enough? Is it reporting rain data correctly?


This. Rachio is at its best when there is a station nearby feeding it good data.



Crabbychas said:


> Apparently the weather station is down or something and not reporting any data.


Glad you found out the issue. Hopefully there is another one close by. If not, you can always set up your own.


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

I have the same issue, except my weather station is 500 yards away and shows rain. Rachio still decides the drench the lawn. I have tried changing all kinds of settings and it still seems to over water year around. I had to manually set every station. Honestly the only thing I've enjoyed about it is that I can control it with my phone.


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## dfw_pilot (Jan 28, 2017)

rrmiller32 said:


> I have the same issue, except my weather station is 500 yards away and shows rain.


This begs the question, "How much rain?" Just because it rains 500 yards away doesn't mean your lawn doesn't need water. Understand what it's doing and why, before you decide to override it. I mean, maybe you have a bad unit, but if your software is up-to-date, you should be good if you've set it up correctly.


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## rrmiller32 (Feb 20, 2018)

dfw_pilot said:


> rrmiller32 said:
> 
> 
> > I have the same issue, except my weather station is 500 yards away and shows rain.
> ...


When you have heavy rain on a Monday and a forecast calling for rain Thursday, Friday, Saturday, logical thinking would say you don't need irrigation on Wednesday. But Rachio does. Even in the summer the lawn will be saturated and it will run more cycles. I have tried adjusting many of the settings in the app and at best it shortens run times by like 2-3 minutes. I think a set schedule does a better job than Rachio's calculations of when watering is needed.


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## Bermuda_Newbie (Jun 15, 2018)

We got one put in last year but I wasn't impressed with the automated part of it. Full disclosure I haven't spent hours looking at all the setting either. The trouble I have is that some of my stations have both grass and plants while others have a variety of plants that have different needs and others are just grass. When it was on the auto settings it wasn't getting enough water. We are on a watering schedule where I am so if it didn't get good watering on my watering day I had to wait another 4 days or water everything by hand. It wasn't worth the risk in 105 degree weather. I may mess with it again this season but being able to set the times myself and adjust if I need to seemed a better use of the system than the guessing I felt like it was doing. I do love being able to turn it on at 6am from my phone or skip a day if I forget to turn it off or it's raining.


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## SCGrassMan (Dec 17, 2017)

> some have grass and plants

That's not really a Rachio issue, that's a poor system design issue to be honest.

I do find I have issues with the automated settings on two of my zones. Coincidentally, those two zones have design issues, or rather lack of design issues.

I feel your pain.


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## dfw_pilot (Jan 28, 2017)

I second the design flaw.



Bermuda_Newbie said:


> We are on a watering schedule where I am so if it didn't get good watering on my watering day I had to wait another 4 days or water everything by hand.


Double, then triple check that's really true. I thought that was true for me too, until I called the city. There are often exemptions for having a smart controller. If your city water district doesn't have exemptions for smart controllers, they might want to reconsider. I guarantee I use less water that my neighbor's "dumb" controllers set to water twice a week.

ETA: I see you're in CA, so you can probably strike what I just wrote.


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## Bermuda_Newbie (Jun 15, 2018)

dfw_pilot said:


> ETA: I see you're in CA, so you can probably strike what I just wrote.


Haha yeah I'm positive. Tuesdays and Saturdays starting April 1st. They are crazy about enforcing it where I am. Both fly-overs and city employees to catch people violating the rules. It starts out as a $50 fine and goes up from there.


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