We're MAD For Irrigation

MAD. It’s all the rage.

But, what is MAD? I’m glad you asked.

MAD is an acronym for Management Allowable Depletion, the best and most recommended way to schedule your irrigation. But what is it?

To explain, let me use an analogy. Imagine your soil is a sponge, and imagine that sponge is as full of water as possible. As the grass or plants absorbs water from the sponge, or as it evaporates into the air, the amount of water in the sponge becomes less.

With an older style of irrigation, water would be added to the sponge on a fixed, regular schedule, regardless of how much water has been removed. For example, the sponge would have water added every three days for 30 minutes each day. This could result in over-watering, because the sponge is already full, or under-watering, because the sponge became completely dry before a fill up.

With MAD, the goal is to add water to the sponge when it reaches a certain amount of dryness, but before it is completely dry. This has a few key benefits:

• It encourages plants to develop deeper root structures, which creates stronger, healthier plants that are more resistant to drought.
• It requires less frequent waterings, because each watering is for a longer period of time with the goal of deeper watering. The overall effect is less water used.
• It allows less water to be lost to evaporation, because the water is deeper into the ground.

It is called Management Allowable Depletion because this irrigation schedule allows the amount of water to deplete to a fixed level before refill.

Compared to a fixed schedule, MAD would fill up the sponge only when required, which could be every two days, or five days, or even longer!

There are two key factors that need to be calculated for MAD style of irrigation: how big the sponge is, and how much water is in the sponge at any one time. To get to those two elements, there are quite a few data points that go into this:

• The type of plant
• The type of soil
• The amount of precipitation
• The amount of water the plant absorbs
• The amount of water that evaporates

The challenge in calculating MAD is ensuring that the inputs are correct, particularly because they are ongoing inputs. However, once you have these inputs, you can create an irrigation schedule that is tailor made for your soil and plants, while saving a large amount of water.

Whenever you install or update your irrigation system, this is a great opportunity to make sure that you know what type of soil you have, and what types of plants are in each zone. This will allow you to be as accurate as possible when creating your watering schedule.

If you’d like to know how Rachio incorporates MAD, please check out our support articles on Flex Schedules.

Happy 4th of July From Rachio

Since the beginning, Rachio has been designed and made in Colorado. It's something we're very proud of.

We have great partners that are located in the US, including manufacturing in Colorado and engineering design in Pennsylvania.

Using local manufacturing services just makes good business sense. As a small company, we rely on our ability to be nimble and agile. We make quick decisions, and being located close to our partners allows us follow through on those decisions.

In addition, whenever issues pop up our close proximity to our manufacturing teams allows us to react extremely quickly, before they become larger issues. Our main production facility is an hour away, and it's a huge benefit for us to be able to check in and see the process from start to finish.

On this Independence Day, we feel very lucky to be able to say that we continue to be designed and built in the United States. Have a wonderful and safe holiday weekend.

July Is Smart Irrigation Month

Welcome to Smart Irrigation month!

What is Smart Irrigation month you may ask?

July is the peak demand month of the year for water, so the Irrigation Association created Smart Irrigation month to raise awareness of water use in the United States. They strive to educate everyone on how we might better use one of our most precious natural resources.

Founded in 2005, the month has steadily gained traction, particularly as parts of the country have experienced their own form of drought.

According to the IA, the month is focused on the 3 following principles:

• Educate businesses, homeowners, growers/producers and other users about efficient water use.
• Encourage industry firms and professionals to promote smart irrigation practices and technologies.
• Position your organization as a leader in smart water stewardship.

At Rachio, we fully embrace Smart Irrigation and the idea that everyone can do something to make their water use more efficient. It’s what drives us as a company, and we have the EPA credentials to prove it.

Throughout July, we’re going to start a few initiatives within the company.

1. First, we’re going to start an educational blog series about the best practices related to maintaining your landscape. 
2. Second, we’re going to highlight some of the trailblazing homeowners who are using Rachio to increase control over their irrigation practices, saving water and money in the process. 
3. Third, we’re going to highlight some of the fantastic irrigation professionals who are helping homeowners install Rachio Iros and keep their landscapes at peak efficiency.

Finally, we’d love to engage with you about your smart irrigation practices. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or whatever social tool you prefer!

Building Hardware Through A Software Lens

The connected device world is an interesting space. We spend a lot of our time trying to figure out how all of the pieces come together, or what makes a good IoT product in general. For us, it always comes down to the software. After all, that’s the promise of a connected world. That’s what you’re paying for: the scalable, intelligent features that come with software. And it’s a beautiful thing when you start to think about devices and household appliances from a pure software perspective.

When you think of it as software enabled by hardware, you start to push the boundaries of what you thought was possible and think about physical products in a much different light. You think about things like “how do we not constrain our software by our hardware?”, which is a very interesting thought process.

Rachio thinks this way.

We are watching a number of trends taking shape because of the transformative power of software on our physical world and we try to interpret what those trends mean for and how they tie into a connected device company. We thought it would be great to share our learnings in a few blog posts, starting with this one, the obvious one.

Start by building a 10x better mousetrap.

Eighty six percent of our customers replace what most of the world deems to be a working product: an irrigation controller that is neither connected nor intelligent but still runs the sprinkler system. If we’re going to continue to replace “working” products, we’re going to need to create something that is ten times better than what’s being recycled.

The key here is to do it with software.  Companies have been making irrigation controllers for decades. There’s most likely not going to be a lot of innovation on the hardware outside of connectivity. Instead, the 10x improvement needs to come from software features. This is probably fairly obvious, but as we go through these trends, you’ll notice how this has a profound difference on the end product.

At Rachio, we believe the product must do something intelligent. It must do something you, the homeowner, couldn’t have done without great pain in the past. Installation of a physical product is just the start. We design and build features that make your ongoing relationship with the product a wonderful experience. We strive to make you feel empowered by the system and brought into the decision making process when you’re ready and willing. Since your ongoing engagement is going to be through the software, that’s where we focus our energy.

Here are just a number of high level benefits that come with a connected device over a non-connected device:

• Convenience: the ability to control and interact with the product from anywhere, on any device.
• Pain Relief: real-time smart scheduling that makes efficient use of a resource, which was painful to do manually in the past. Or a cycling technology, like our smart cycle, that more efficiently distributes the resource. 
• Empowerment: usage information at your fingertips about a valuable resource like water or energy, at the single product and community level. 
• Shared Access: a sharing feature that makes a subset of product functionality available to family members or service providers, on-site or remotely.
• Timely Information: notifications that get you information that you deem important in notification systems you’ve become accustomed to.
• Bundling: combinations of data feeds, like how a weather feed can now affect your landscape.
• Delighters: the small things that were essentially impossible before, but can easily be done with software now.  An example for us is our water hammer feature that keeps your pipes from banging in the middle of the night when your irrigation system is switching zones. 

This is just the short list and these types of benefits can really only be achieved with software, and they make these products very different from their non-connected predecessors. The really exciting thing is that these features can also be expanded on and continuously updated for our customers as we learn what they value most.

Next up, Getting Connected - what a public API can mean for a connected device company.

We’re looking forward to continuing to share as we learn.

Rachio is now integrated with Crestron

Rachio is thrilled to announce that we are now integrated with Crestron, one of the leading providers of control and automation systems. Use the new Rachio driver from Crestron to utilize Crestron’s personalization settings and get more engaged with your landscape.

To see all the 3rd party products that Rachio works with, please see our integrations page.

Colorado Parks

As Summer draws near, Coloradans are packing away their coats and snow gear in exchange for shorts, hiking boots and the occasional set of flip flops. While many are reluctant to give up their skis, the warmer seasons are welcomed by those who are appreciative of what our mountains have to offer without snow: kayaking, rock climbing, world-class hiking, and more!

May is considered the wettest month in Colorado, and it's lived up to its name in the last week or so. Across the state, we've experienced day after day of rain, sleet and snow, depending on elevation. While this dampened the mood of those who were hoping to spend Mother's Day outdoors, this weather was of tremendous benefit to the health of our ecosystems, many of which are deprived of water.

Realizing that it was a little too early in the season to hike one of our famous 14,000' peaks, I set out early on Saturday morning to one of my favorite places, Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP), to see the effect of our recent weather on the landscape.

I was not disappointed. Despite the rain -- and later, snow -- I could not have chosen a better day. There were very few people in the park as a result of the weather, and the areas I passed on the way up that were not covered by snow were vibrant, green, and healthy as a result of the moisture.

I set out at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead, with the intent of reaching Mills Lake, named after Enos Mills who lobbied for the creation of the park in the early 20th century. Altogether, the hike would total a relatively short 5 miles.

On my way up, I passed Alberta Falls. Even though I had taken the same route many times before, never had I seen so much water running through them.

By the time I had reached Mills Lake, I was approximately 10,000' above sea-level, and surrounded by three majestic, albeit obscured peaks: Pagoda, Chief's Head, and Thatchtop. Unfortunately, the fog was such that these are virtually impossible to see in the photos below!

RMNP is a special place for anyone interested in hydrology or water, in general. With the Continental Divide running the length of the park, precipitation in the park is split between the Colorado River and Mississippi drainage. The water in Mills, which is East of the Divide, runs into the latter.

If you make it out to Colorado this Summer, I'd strongly recommend you pay a visit to one of our many great alpine lakes. With a warm week ahead, I, as well as a few of my teammates at Rachio, are excited to get outside and see the effect that our recent precipitation has had on these lakes and the ecosystems that they are a part of.

Evolve or Perish

This is a guest blog post written by Alfred Dilluvio. Having held conservation positions in both the Klamath and Daniel Boone National Forests, Alfred has a deep appreciation for the natural world. Joining Aqua Turf in 2014, his chief objectives are the introduction of smart irrigation controllers and the development of more sustainable business practices.

Alfred Dilluvio

Aqua Turf Irrigation Systems LLC





Evolve or perish has long been the overarching mandate for all living things. When an organism develops characteristics which enable its survival, usually as a result of environmental pressure, other species occupying similar ecological niches are forced to develop new traits. It is this constant changing, or adaptation, which often drives evolution and specialization. Companies and businesses are not all that different; especially when it comes to new technology or the introduction of new products. If something is introduced that works very well, other companies will often produce something with similar design and functionality. Sometimes, a product (or group of products) will reign at the top for many years before another one is engineered to challenge it. That is precisely what is happening in the irrigation industry, especially in the realm of system control. Wi-Fi based smart irrigation controllers and intuitive applications are challenging the biggest names in the Irrigation Industry. One small company from Colorado is leading the way, introducing features designed to save water, money, and time. Rachio has effectively engineered a device that I believe will become the benchmark for all subsequent irrigation controllers. Additionally, it is my hope that this innovation will kick start an industry that has long remained dormant, content to introduce so much of the “same old thing.”

The intent of this piece is not to slam the irrigation industry, as the methods for delivering water to landscapes have certainly been improved since the start of automated irrigation. On site soil and moisture sensors have long been used to save both water and money by interrupting regularly scheduled irrigation events. Additionally, different types of emitters have been both redesigned and enhanced to water more efficiently. It is really just the controllers that have been without significant improvement. And this lack of development has certainly not been limited to the controller’s functionality. I am most frustrated by the fact that they have remained, for the most part, an unnecessarily complex interface of dials and buttons. It should therefore come as no surprise that people don’t like touching their controllers, and usually avoid doing so at all costs. There is no reason, at this point in time, for someone to be intimidated by the technology keeping watch over their homes or properties. The interfaces pioneered by tech companies like Apple have set the standard for user friendliness and intuitiveness. Here is an opportunity for a technology company to introduce a new species of controller, and by doing so, hopefully spur a reaction by the entire industry, to evolve or perish.

Let’s take a moment to examine the ways in which new smart controllers will change the game. By providing friendly applications and remote scheduling from any web enabled device, users are empowered to get involved with their irrigation systems without spending an inordinate amount of time or money doing so. And why not get involved with your lawn sprinklers? Mismanagement can result in costly water bills or a dry, brown, lawn. The major players in the irrigation industry have never given users or contractors a controller that is “easy” to use. And no one has ever given people the ability to manage their systems from anywhere with a free application that is brilliantly designed. It is my sincere hope that the irrigation industry reacts to this new technology by making it the new standard and incorporating it in high profile system design. It is also my hope that traditional controllers lacking this technology be phased out, similar to the extinction of species no longer capable of survival.

If the convenience and user friendliness of this device is not enough to inspire a change from the status quo, let’s consider that it is specifically designed to save both water and money, both things we all could use a little more of. Traditional controllers know nothing about your landscape, and they leave irrigation totally up to the knowledge or guesswork of whoever is taking care of the lawn or plantings. New smart controllers have developed different ways to generate watering schedules based on landscape profiles which are created during configuration. They aim to put back only as much water is lost by the soil and plant life. Irrigation should be a sustainable practice, and one that doesn’t break your bank. If traditional irrigation timers, which require changes to be input at the controller site, were all replaced by this new breed of smart controllers, we would be saving water, fuel, and money, effectively putting the “green” back in the green industry.

Rachio and other companies coming out with similar technology realize that the best way to make automatic changes to irrigation schedules is to connect the device to local weather. By inputting a zip code during wifi configuration, the controller knows where it lives. This allows it to regularly suspend or vary irrigation schedules as needed according to the local weather. Also, the use of regular push notifications can alert property managers or homeowners when irrigation schedules have been altered. The peace of mind afforded by such a feature cannot be discounted. Once again, this new breed of controller communicates what is going on with your lawn/garden and presents you with an ability to manage it more effectively.

Everything costs more nowadays. Water is no longer cheap or abundant. Efforts for conservation and preservation are omnipresent. With issues like this effecting humanity on a global scale, we have to rely on the brightest minds and the best technology to give us the best products. I believe the Rachio Iro, and other controllers like it, are a monumental step in the right direction, and I hope they inspire a dramatic shift in thought. Evolve or perish; it’s as simple as that.