My water usage up last couple months from 4500 to 5000 gallons to 6000 to 6500 gallons. In my area been in drought for about 7 weeks till last week.

LOL, that's for sure, still looking for the 2.5. Sounds like a thinly veiled ad to me, especially knocking the premier brand by NAME yet. Wonder if the poster knows there are MANY other ways to stop an auto system without purchasing a thing....LOL !

Don’t tell anyone but when I go on my 6am walk when home's irrigation systems are running I take a pliers with me and adjust the heads that are spraying into the street and gutter. Just hate to see those rivers of irrigation water running down the gutters.

If I gave you my address would you walk by here?

And....we have a confession!

I just bought a new Rachio as well and will be installing tomorrow. This Hunter controller that the builder installed is garbage.

My yard has a slight slope to it so tons of water runs out into the street. It stinks.

Over the past two months, I have been manually monitoring the rainfall and the irrigation system just to see how much savings there really was. Before that, my irrigation water bill was about $86 (17,670 gallons used) from May 10th - June 12th since we were in a drought and I was watering 3-4 times per week to "save the lawn".

I am using the Rain Drop app to monitor the amount of rainfall we have gotten over the past 24 and 72 hours. If the 72 hour number falls below about 0.5", I turn the irrigation system on to water the next morning at 3:00 AM. During the time between June 12th and today (July 31st), I have only had to water with the irrigation system 2 times. My water bill last month was about $19 (3,130 gallons used). It takes maybe 2-3 minutes every day to check the app and turn on/off the system in the gargage.

The rain sensor on the house does work if the rainfall is at least 1/4" but I noticed that it doesn't stay on for more than 1 day, so even if we get 3/4" of rainfall, the system will come on the next day if scheduled to since the rain sensor goes off. This is where the overwatering waste comes in to play. The Rain Drop app is free and you can set up a pin at your specific address to monitor the rainfall there (I am certain it uses local weather stations to predict the rainfall at my specific address, but it has been close enough so far). My lawn is green and lush so far using this method. I probably won't do it forever, but again I wanted to see what the real savings was by monitoring it manually versus relying on the system and the rain sensor to predict when the lawn should be watered.

I'm open to other ideas as well...

I understand why you did this experiment but you should get a modern irrigation controller like the Rachio. It will pay for itself in 6 months and it will do everything you are doing manually and enjoy monitoring it.

So what brand name of the magical controller? I see water running down street drain for 20 minutes wouldn’t that be waste of water?

You could check ours but we do run them the zones start at 3 in the morning. Haven't run ours in I don't know how long.

Same with a B-Hyve water controller linked to a forecast weather station. I reviewed the weather station forecast, and the rain in the forecast which the controller was showing wasn't anywhere near the forecast on the TV, and the TV forecast was correct, no rain.

I lost a lot of lawn from the weather forecast link not being accurate and eliminating watering when forecasted for weeks never materialized. I have my controller on manual to insure that the lawn is watered, rain or not. . and the water just goes back to the retention pond with some filtering, so its better for the wildlife which is dependent upon cleaner water.

so maybe the OP's observation and conclusion needs some re-work...

We did get 2.5” in Sumter Landing. I drove across the Morse bridge and it was flooding. It was one of the fast and heavy rain I have drove in in awhile. 466 and Morse had flood waters so yes if you were in this area you got 2.5 inches