Water Story: Philip Sperry

Philip Sperry
Suwanee, GA
Rachio user for 3 months



Q. What led you to purchase your Rachio Iro?
A. I love using technology to make my life simpler and more efficient. Iro was the natural choice to automate my irrigation system.

Q. How has the Iro changed your lawn/ landscape?
A. Iro keeps everything watered and green while saving 30%+ on water usage.

Q. Where is the best place you have controlled your Iro from?
A. My yard. It is super convenient to turn my sprinklers on and off while I adjust my sprinklers. Sidewalks do not require regular watering :-)

Q. What is your favorite feature of the Rachio app or webapp?
A. I am currently testing flex schedules, and it looks like it will result in big water savings. I also love that it can use my personal weather station which makes the whole thing work better, especially here in the south where showers are widely scattered.

Q. How has owning an Iro enhanced your understanding of your water use?
A. Greatly. Not just how much I use but how much I've wasted in the past.

Q. Do you have any other stories about the Rachio Iro you'd like to share?
A. I had no idea how often how often my sprinklers ran when it was not needed. I knew they sometimes ran when it was raining but rain delays have canceled over a third of my cycles so far.

Rachio PROfile with Kyle Scott

Kyle Scott
Scott Irrigation
Red Deer, Alberta
http://www.scottirrigation.ca/






Q. When was the first time you installed a Rachio?
A. I installed first rachio this June, found out about them through our supplier.

Q. What’s your favorite feature of the Rachio Iro?
A. The shared access feature is my favorite feature. It's so handy to use my phone to turn on particular zones at customer properties.

Q. What do you like about Rachio?
A. I like that the rachio is easy to install and program. I also like the compact design.

Q. Do your customers like Rachio?
A. For every rachio I have installed, I've had nothing but positive feedback. The customers like how user friendly they are.

Q. Has Rachio changed your relationship with your customers?
A. Rachio has gave us another irrigation option for our customers.

Q. How long have you been in business?
A. My father started the business 35 years ago.

Q. What’s your favorite aspect of landscaping or irrigation?
A. My favorite aspect of irrigation is installing a user friendly irrigation system for our customers' watering needs.

Understanding our water use

Water is one of our most precious natural resources. It’s also a substance we take a bit for granted in the United States.

The latest US water usage numbers estimate that as a country we use around 397,000,000 acre-feet of water per year. An acre-foot of water is how much water it takes to fill an acre of land with a foot of water. At 325,851 gallons per acre-foot, that’s 129,362,847,000,000 gallons per year, or 129.4 trillion gallons per year. That’s a lot of commas and a lot of water. But what does it cost for residential users?

Water prices vary dramatically across the country, and the highest prices aren’t always where you think (like California). According to Circle of Blue, in 2015, Atlanta and Seattle had some of the highest water prices in the country, where average monthly water bills can be in excess of $300. Water may be all around us, but making it drinkable, clean, and on demand can be challenging. Alternatively, reducing water usage by municipalities can also have negative ramifications for communities, as most communities and cities rely on revenue from water usage as part of annual budgets, and revenue is based on overall water usage.

Even if you want to change your water habits, it can feel overwhelming. Do you take shorter showers? Not flush the toilet? Wash your dishes less often? These are hard habits to change and sustain, and frankly, in most cases they are likely to fail. We like taking our showers, having a bath every once in a while, letting the water run while brushing our teeth, and for most communities, water prices are still quite cheap.

The one area where most households can dramatically impact water usage is outside of the home, in the yard.

As we’ve discussed over this past Smart Irrigation month, there are many techniques and tricks that you can use to keep your landscape looking great, while reducing overall water usage. From understanding evapotranspiration, to incorporating management allowable depletion as well as cycle and soak, landscape irrigation is ripe for improvement for most homes. Most folks don’t realize that on average, 59% of a household’s overall water use is outside the home, on things exactly like irrigation.

Understanding your water use is the first step in making a lasting impact on your water consumption, and there is a wealth of knowledge out there to improve your irrigation beyond the techniques we’ve discussed this past month. Keep checking on this blog for other tips and tricks, and enjoy your landscape!

Water Story: Rich Salkin

Rich Salkin
Omaha, NE
Rachio user for over 1 year




Q. What led you to purchase your Rachio Iro?
A. I heard about the Iro before it was available and thought that it was the best idea I've seen. I was looking for a replacement for my timer based controller for a while. I was getting frustrated having the sprinklers go off even though we just had a large rain storm. I liked the idea of a sprinkler controller being able to track rain fall amounts and decide if water was needed. After finding the Iro, I was hooked and pre-ordered it.

Q. How has the Iro changed your lawn/ landscape?
A. My lawn has never looked better! The back of my house faces south east and gets a lot of sun. It is also slightly sloped and never really greened up very well. It also turned brown in the late summer because of the sun and slope. My back yard improved dramatically after I installed the Iro.

Q. Where is the best place you have controlled your Iro from?
A. From work! Believe it or not! I planted some new grass seed and forgot to water that part of the yard. So I opened up the app on my iPhone and started that zone.

Q. What is your favorite feature of the Rachio app or webapp?
A. I like to make sure that my sprinkler heads are in good working order so I love the ability to walk around my yard and turn zones on or off from my phone. It's a lot easier to control the sprinkler system when you are right in the middle of the yard.

Q. How has owning an Iro enhanced your understanding of your water use?
A. Seeing the amount of water that was saved simply by knowing how much rain we've received or how much is forcasted has given me a respect for water conservation. I think that if more people would change out their timer controller for a Rachio Iro we wouldn't be having water issues.

Q. Do you have any other stories about the Rachio Iro you'd like to share?
A. I have be talking about the Iro and how it has saved me a ton of money on water bills to anyone that would listen. A number of my friends jumped on the band wagon and got an Iro.

Q. How long have you owned your Rachio Iro?
A. I was one of the first to receive one so I've owned an Rachio Iro since they were released.

Rachio 2.0: Evolution of an App

That went by fast!

I can hardly believe we launched version 1.0 of the Rachio app along with our ground breaking intelligent irrigation controller, the Iro, just over a year ago.

When we first set out to change how people water their yard, we knew it had to be smart, with a world-class, cloud-based platform incorporating the latest in irrigation science. We knew it had to be easy to use, so we make setting it up as easy as walking around the yard and tapping a few buttons. We knew it to be fun, so we built simple manual controls so that control was never more than a few taps away. I personally love using this feature to surprise the neighborhood kids when they play on my lawn.

Since then, we have received a lot of feedback from our fantastic customers, and we love to listen! While planning our next big release, we reviewed thousands of comments and suggestions, and we talked to many of our customers directly. We learned that our customers are passionate about their yards and saving water. They love how easy it is to setup and control the Iro. They also told us that they want more insight into the factors that go into maintaining a healthy yard while saving water.

With this feedback in mind, we set out to take intelligent irrigation to the next level, and here’s what we came up with...

System Info Front and Center

Our customers told us that they want to quickly see the state their system is in, so we put that front and center. On the main screen, you see the Dashboard tab, providing an overview of your Iro and your yard, including local weather, watering schedules, zones, and monthly water use. From each Dashboard view, you can quickly go deep into detailed views. At the bottom of the screen are tabs to navigate to additional views. We also added a big round button for quick access to manually water your lawn. At the top of the screen is the name and location of the currently selected Iro. Finally, at the top left of the screen is a menu icon that will take you to the global app settings.

Activity Feed

Our customers told us they wanted more insight into their irrigation system, so we added a live activity feed. We also updated our cloud services to provide more real-time data and to support user actions for certain activities and events. On the Activities Screen, you will see a variety of activity feeds, including real time updates, recent watering history, schedule updates, and device updates, some of which you can change directly from the feed.

Remote Control

Customers love how easy and fun it is to manually control individual zones from anywhere using your their phone. However, we also heard many customers wanted the ability to quickly set a run time for all zones at the same time. So we came up with the Rachio remote. Just tap on the big blue button at the bottom of the main screen.

This brings up a beautiful remote control screen where you can easily select a zone to water, or all zones if you want. Easily set the amount of time you want to water simply by dragging the remote control knob with one finger. Select All Zones to run each zone for the same amount of time. Select individual zones for a custom manual schedule. Tap the reset button to set the time for all zones or individual zones back to zero. When you are ready, just tap the Run Now button to start watering.

These are just a few of the major improvements we have made to the Rachio app based on feedback from our customers. You have probably also heard about our new Flex Schedules. If you haven’t, you can read about those on our website and blog. Finally, we are also proud to release a Web version of our app. Stay tuned for more on that.

At Rachio, we are passionate about creating great products that make it easy and fun for our customers to save and manage water. We have been overwhelmed by the amount of support and feedback we have received and we hope you love using the newest Rachio apps as much as we loved making them. We can’t wait to hear from you and look forward to many happy releases.

Rachio PROfile with Jason Powers

Jason Powers
Powers Energy Solutions
Vienna, VA
https://smart-powers.com/







Q. When was the first time you installed a Rachio?
A. Although we’ve known about Rachio for a while now, we didn’t actually install our first Iro until shortly after completing the Rachio Pro training in mid-April.

Q. What’s your favorite feature of the Rachio Iro?
A. Coming from an environmental and energy efficiency background, Rachio’s EPA WaterSense certification is what first caught my eye. Studies have shown that up to 50% of the water we use outside for irrigation is wasted so ability to conserve water and save my customers money on their water bill is huge. It’s also nice to see that state and municipal governments have realized the values in these technologies and are starting to offer rebates to install them. We work with all our customers to determine if water efficiency rebates are available in their area and then guide them through the rebate process so they can receive their rebate as quickly as possible.

Q. What do you like about Rachio?

A. That it works with Nest! My company specializes in Nest products and the many integrated ‘Works with Nest’ devices. Since we are a home automation company not an irrigation company, the ability to set up and install without the specialized skills of an irrigation technician is a big plus for us. 

Q. Do your customers like Rachio?

A. They do, and the more they learn about it the more they like it! I find that most of our customers fall into one of two camps those that have never heard of a smart sprinkler systems before and those that may have seen Rachio at one of the big box stores but didn’t really understand its value. We provide them with all the information they need to make an educated decision on whether or not to integrate Rachio into their smart home.

Q. Has Rachio changed your relationship with your customers?

A. It has, for many of the reasons stated earlier. We like being able to provide our customers with as much choice as possible when it comes to smart home products. Education is key; the IoT marketplace is rapidly changing and expanding, our customers trust that we will give them the most up to date information on all the smart home products on the market. I like to say, we don’t just install smart home devices, we help design your connected home.

Q. How long have you been in business?

A. I started my company in October of 2013. For the first year, it was just me installing smart home products in the Northern Virginia / Washington, DC area, now I have over 20 technicians in many major cities across the country. If we are not in your city yet, give us time…we soon will be!

Q. What’s your favorite aspect of landscaping or irrigation?

A. That’s a great question. As an undergrad, I majored in biology and I really like the trend toward more native species in landscaping. Native plant species require less water and provide more natural habitat and food sources for native animal species. My father is master naturalist and an apiary and he loves talking about the benefits native flower species have on bee populations. He is very proud of the Certified Wildlife Habitat sign in his front yard and I’m proud of the work we are do educating customers on the value of water conservation.

What is evapotranspiration

Evapotranspiration. If you can pronounce that, congratulations, you’ve reached another level in your irrigation life.

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a fancy way of referring to the amount of water that leaves the ground, through two methods:

1. Good old evaporation, when water turns into vapor
2. Plant transpiration, when plants ‘breath’ and release moisture into the air

In the real world, there is no good way to distinguish between evaporation and transpiration, so ET is commonly referred to as one process. Furthermore, it is just one part of the water cycle, which describes how water moves throughout our environment. This includes such fun terms as condensation, sublimation, seepage, and (my personal favorite) infiltration. However, for our purposes, we only really care about ET.

Knowing how much water leaves the ground at any point is completely vital to efficient water management for one reason: it allows us to know how much water we need to add back to the ground.

There are only two main ways that water gets returned back into the ground: precipitation and irrigation. To successfully calculate how much water needs to be returned to the ground by irrigation, you must know about precipitation, but that is relatively easy to track.

That being said, measuring ET can be a challenge. The amount of evapotranspiration fluctuates throughout the year, primarily because of temperature. ET is higher with warmer temperatures and lower with cooler temperatures. This is the main reason why the amount of water your landscape needs increases in the summer and decreases in the spring and fall.

* Image from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

However, there are many variables that go into its calculation like soil type, plant type, temperature, direct or indirect sunlight, wind, ambient humidity, etc. Accurate data for all of these variables is imperative to calculate the most correct ET value. Without ET, it’s impossible to correctly calculate how much water your landscape requires.

If you’d like to understand how Rachio incorporates evapotranspiration, check out this excellent support article.

Water Stories: Matt Beazer

Matt Beazer
Spokane Valley, WA
Rachio user for 3 months



Q. What led you to purchase your Rachio Iro?
A. I bought my home in early fall of 2014. It had been unoccupied for 8 years. In the spring I found myself faced with fixing most of a decade of deferred sprinkler maintenance. The sprinkler controller is in my basement, so doing sprinkler testing had me running across the house and down two flights of stairs every time I wanted to test a new sprinkler head or purge a line of dirt. The Rachio has saved me literally hundreds of trips up and down the stairs in the last few months.

Q: How has the Iro changed your lawn/ landscape?
A. I was guessing with my sprinkler watering times before, leading to browning of grass in some zones and overwatering in others. The Rachio gave me a baseline that kept the lawn green in the brown areas and avoided runoff into the street in others.

Q: Where is the best place you have controlled your Iro from?
A. The best place I've used it is from work while watching my security cameras over the Internet. The neighbors across the street think my front lawn is their own personal dog toilet. I installed security cameras to catch them at it but the neighbors didn't care and sent their dogs over to "do their business" anyhow. Now when I see the dogs in my yard I use the Rachio app to turn the sprinklers on remotely, resulting in the dogs making a fast exit from my yard and returning to their owners soaking wet. Needless to say I've stepped in a lot less dog poo while mowing my lawn since installing the Iro!

Q: What is your favorite feature of the Rachio app or webapp?
A. Being able to turn on specific zones anywhere in the world I have Internet access at any time for any reason.

Q: How has owning an Iro enhanced your understanding of your water use?
A. People don't realize how many gallons of water it takes to keep your yard green. I own a third of an acre and it takes vastly more water than I realized to water it until I got the Iro.

Q: Do you have any other stories about the Rachio Iro you'd like to share?
A. When it's hot outside and my kids want to play in the sprinklers, I just pull out my phone and turn the sprinklers on and relax on the patio while they play. Then when they get cold or tired I don't have to worry about the kids forgetting to turn the water off and flooding the yard.

Rachio PROfile with Michael Greathouse

Michael Greathouse
GreatWater Irrigation and Ecoscapes
Fort Worth, TX
http://www.greatwaterirrigation.com/



Q. When was the first time you installed a Rachio?
A. April this year (2015), about a week after it was introduced to me through our supplier, Ewing.

Q. What’s your favorite feature of the Rachio Iro?
A. The weather intelligence and water budgeting features. North Texas has some very unpredictable weather and this year has definitely been extreme. This controller can help my clients stay ahead of their water needs as our climate has taken us from a serious drought to tropical storm levels of rain.

Q. What do you like about Rachio?
A. I love that its core function is to help people save water in a very easy, automated way. Our business is centered around helping people water smarter. Being able to give irrigation systems a smart controller allows them to start saving water immediately while knowing their yard is still getting all the water it needs.

Q. Do your customers like Rachio?
A. Almost everyone I've introduced to the Iro is very interested in the product and think it's something that really just makes sense. Every controller I've installed has been met with novel excitement and enthusiasm. Once a customer starts getting the notifications showing that their system is now interacting with the world around it, they really start to understand and trust that it's making a significantly positive impact on their water usage.

Q. Has Rachio changed your relationship with your customers?
A. Talking to my customers about the different smart features of the Iro controller has helped bring their attention and interest to other smart components that are available such as flow sensors, soil sensors and rain/freeze sensors. We've noticed that when our customers gain the ability to control their irrigation system using the same device they use for the rest of daily life, they feel more empowered to manage it effectively since it's easier to use.

Q. How long have you been in business?
A. My company was founded in May 2014 after having worked in the industry for over 15 years.

Q. What’s your favorite aspect of landscaping or irrigation?
A. I love being able to help solve people’s problems with their landscaping and irrigation systems. Whether they've never used a sprinkler system, or they've been treated unfairly in the past, I like leaving the property owner feeling like they understand their irrigation systems better than they ever have before. We're also really proud of the fact that we're offering products and services that don't just make peoples landscapes look better, but that actually have a tangibly positive effect on our local environment by significantly reducing their landscape water and chemical treatment usage.

Avoid Water Runoff With Cycle and Soak

Have you ever seen water dribbling off a lawn onto the pavement or into a gutter? The sprinklers are likely still running, but the yard isn’t absorbing the water anymore. It’s frustrating, right? All that water being used, but it’s not going where it’s supposed to: the yard. This is called runoff, and it's a waste of water.

How do you avoid water runoff?

The best way to avoid runoff* is with a technique called cycle and soak!

Cycle and soak is a technique developed to avoid water runoff, making your water use more efficient, and making sure your yard gets the moisture it needs. The basic idea is to break up your irrigation into two or three parts in order to allow the dirt to better absorb the water. This has a few key benefits:

• It allows your grass or plants to properly absorb the water.
• It promotes root depth, which makes your yard more drought and disease resistant.

Using the same metaphor that we used in our MAD article, imagine that your yard is a dense sponge. When you pour water onto a sponge, it takes time for the water to work its way through the entire sponge. And you need the water to get through the entire sponge, because you want all of your roots to have water!

By breaking up an irrigation session into shorter parts, this lets the water work its way through the entire sponge, making room for the second or third cycle of water to follow. It also allows the water to get deeper into the soil.

How do you calculate how long each cycle should take?

The short answer is that you need to know the density of your sponge, and that depends primarily on what type of dirt you have. For example, sandy soil absorbs water very quickly, but clay soil does not, and there is a wide range of soil in between. An irrigation professional can easily tell you what type of soil you have, and it’s great to know on a zone by zone basis. Most professionals would be happy to do an audit of your landscape in order to determine this info, and make sure the rest of your irrigation system is optimized.

Your soil type, plus the type of plant being watered, plus a few other factors, determines how long the irrigation session should last. For example, one zone might need 45 minutes in one session. With cycle and soak, this would get broken into 2 or 3 different sessions, perhaps 15 minutes of watering followed by a 30 minute rest, then another 15 minutes of watering, then another 30 minute rest, then the final 15 minutes of watering. This allows the water to truly soak the landscape, without runoff.

If you would like to know how Rachio incorporates Cycle and Soak, and all the variables that come into play, please check out our support article on Smart Cycle.

* Assuming that your sprinkler heads are pointed where they are supposed to!

Water Stories: Barry Jordan

Barry Jordan
August, GA
Rachio user for 3 months




Q. What led you to purchase your Rachio Iro?
A. I wanted to save resources and have a beautiful lawn. I was just guessing before. Now I feel like I'm getting personal advice from a professional landscaper.

Q. How has the Iro changed your lawn/ landscape?
A. I've seen areas of stress on my lawn "green up." But more importantly, Rachio is always working for me. I don't have to think about whether or not I should or should not adjust my sprinkler system every few months, only to find that after I increased it, it rained 3 times in a week! Rachio is always watching out for my lawn.

Q. Where is the best place you have controlled your Iro from?
A. Work. We had some landscaping done and needed some sprinkler heads added to our system, so we had a guy come to the house. Since my wife and I were both gone that day, we didn't feel like leaving the garage door open for him (and anyone else) to wander in. He called me at work to let me know he was done and he would "just have to come back tomorrow and turn the system on to check it." I let him know I could do that for him now. Since I work on a computer and have Rachio saved as a favorite site, I was able to open the page the minute he called. He was amazed at how I was able to instantly turn on the zone he needed. It only took 2 minutes to ensure everything was correct! (He had a lot of questions about the Iro, which I was happy to answer for him.)

Q. What is your favorite feature of the Rachio app or webapp?
A. The analytic reports. I love seeing how many gallons of water I'm saving just by having the Rachio (almost 4000 gallons this month alone).

Q. How has owning an Iro enhanced your understanding of your water use?
A. I feel I've learned a lot about my yard. I never had the interest or saw the need to do a simple soil test, for example, and was surprised to find that my soil was the exact opposite type that I thought it was. This only cost me a few minutes of my time and was well worth it.

If you would like to be featured on rachio.com for your water story, we'd love to hear from you. Just fill out this survey, and we'll be in touch!

Thanks to Barry for being our inaugural water story!

Rachio's One Year Anniversary

Today, Rachio celebrated the 1 year anniversary of the Rachio Iro being available.

To everyone who has used Rachio, worked with us, or helped us along the way, thank you.

Rachio started at a Denver Startup Weekend event over two years ago with the goal of solving the problem when sprinklers are watering just before, during, or after it's rained. To date, Rachio has helped homeowners save over 150 million gallons of water, a number that continues to grow rapidly. While we started with that simple idea, Rachio has evolved and grown into a leader in the Internet of Things space, with top ratings across all of our sales channels and a passionate and dedicated community.

We knew the Iro would be one way to ease drought issues and we’re so glad that consumers are using the Iro to keep their landscape beautiful but to also conserve our world’s most precious resource.

This special anniversary coincides with two other events: the release of our 2.0 version of the Rachio app, and Smart Irrigation Month, which promotes the efficient use of water.

We published a press release commemorating the event.

Thank you!

Rachio PROfile with Zack Williams

Welcome to the first in Rachio's PROfile series, where we interview some of the incredible irrigation professionals who are installing Rachio for the clients. We love our professionals, and we'd like you to get to know them a bit more.

The first one in our series is someone who impresses us greatly: Zack Williams. The design sense his team brings to their clients is incredible, and you can see it on their website.

Zack Williams
Regenesis Ecological Design
Ashland, OR
www.regenesisdesign.com




Q. When was the first time you installed a Rachio Iro?

A. Our first Iro was installed on March 24th of this year. About a month after we first learned about the product.

Q. What’s your favorite feature of the Rachio Iro?

A. Being able to remotely manage multiple Client Irrigation Systems and make adjustments on the fly, no matter where we are.

Q. What do you like about Rachio?

A. As a Company, you’ve been very responsive to our questions and concerns about the product and the App. Your community boards are a really great way to stay in the loop about planned updates, and read about other users’ experiences.

Q. Do your customers like Rachio?
A. Yes. While many of our Customers are not entirely tech. savvy, they like the concept, and are easily able to understand the App UI.

Q. Has Rachio changed your relationship with your customers? 
A. It’s improved our ability to adjust our Customer’s irrigation schedules quickly. If a Maintenance Tech. sees a zone isn’t getting enough water, he can send me a text, and I’ll add time to the schedule. And vice-versa – it’s instant.

Q. How long have you been in business?

A. 7 years this June!

Q. What’s your favorite aspect of landscaping or irrigation?

A. Being outside, and working with plants. I love plants.

Rachio 2.0 Is Out

We are very excited to announce that version 2.0 of the Rachio app on both iOS and Android are released. Go get them!

The team has been working on the features, upgrades, and visual changes in the app for a long time, and we cannot wait for you to try it out.

There are a few features in particular that we would like to highlight:

Flex Schedules

With Flex Schedules, Rachio Iro uses the latest in academic, peer-reviewed irrigation research to create and dynamically update the perfect irrigation schedule you. Flex uses an irrigation technique called Management Allowable Depletion (MAD) that can even further reduce your water usage while promoting a healthy and drought resistant landscape. Flex waters your lawn less frequently but more deeply, encouraging plants to build stronger root structures.

Rachio incorporates this new technique and combines it with all the smart weather information you are already familiar with.

For more info, check out our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) article on Flex.

New Activity Feed

The new awesome activity screen is a single place where you can quickly see all the events related to your irrigation system.

For more info, check out this article on the new activity feed.

Preferred Weather Stations

Choose any local or personal weather station to ensure your Iro has the most accurate weather data available. The app has a quick, visual, and easy way to see where your weather station is relative to your Iro.

For more info, check out this article on picking a weather station.

New Dashboard

The new dashboard puts everything you need to know in one place. Monitor your Rachio Iro's status, schedule changes, watering zones, and more.

For more info, check out this article on the new dashboard.

Know Your Yard

Easily see past, present, and future watering and even choose a photo for each zone.

For further info, check out our support article on keeping track of your yard.

Remote

Start watering in all or any specific at a touch of a button.

For more info, see this article on the new remote feature.

If you have any questions about these new features, you can always reach us on our support site.

Enjoy!