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!

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.