Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
Yes, the rate does increase if you use more than 7,000 gallons and again at 14,000 gallons. I would suggest that you compare your irrigation water usage to other houses with similar lawns. Water bills are public information. You can view any water bill by going to "districtgov.org" and clicking on "utility bill information", and follow the links and search for the bill using the house address.
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Yes, I have compared to neighbors. There are 5 of us with pie shaped lots of approx the same sq ft (within +/- 200). All of our irrigation water usage and bills are high. That's why I started looking at how to fix it. The Rachio stood out among them all. The app is tremendously better than Hunters. Lots easier to use. I also added a flowmeter (
Everydrop wired irrigation flow meter/) that connects to the Rachio as a sensor. In the app, you run a 3 minute calibration on each zone and it determines the flow rate in gallons per minute. You can then set a % low and % high range where if the flow falls outside, you'll get an email that there is a problem. Mine is set to 90% and 110%. I'm concerned about low flow because I have a filter on the irrigation line before the valves to filter the nasty water and help prevent clogging the filters on each sprinkler head. So with this, I will get notified if the flow drops below 90% of calibration flow and I'll know to clean the filter. If it is high, then I know that either I have a leak or an issue with a broken sprinkler head and more water is coming out it than should be. And yes, each zone has a slightly different calibrated flow rate due to the type and # of heads. A high flow rate on a zone will disable that zone so it won't run again until you fix the issue and re-enable the zone.
The Rachio app is free but there is an optional in-app purchase ($29.99) that adds valve monitoring. The valve monitoring setup goes through a calibration and measures the mA needed to open each valve. If one changes within a % range that you set, you'll be notified by email. You'll then know that a valve needs to be replaced.