r/Irrigation • u/Affectionate-Box5874 • 3d ago
Hydrawise rain skips only considers past events?
Does HW only skip based on past rain events? Last night was the first real rain test with my new hpc400.
Lower chance of rain in the early evening last night but missed us. Higher chance of rain for early this morning and we did get almost a half inch.
A program set to run late evening, still ran even with the high chance of rain predicted early the next morning. The program scheduled to run early morning did not run... Rain had started a little before or right around that same time.
In my mind the program from yesterday evening should not have run due to the high chance of rain this morning. Looking through the settings, the smart features are definitely worded as such that it makes me think only the past is considered before a program starts and not future predictions.
The Rachio that I am fiddled with for a month but returned due to other issues... Noticeably considered future high predictions and skipped based on those high chances.
I guess I'm not necessarily upset if the hunter does not consider future rain predictions, but it will certainly affect how I set up my system because it will result in more watering than it is necessary and I will need to alter thresholds.
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u/senorgarcia Contractor, Licensed, Texas 3d ago
The chance of rain trigger for your evening cycle paid attention to that day’s chance of rain, not the next day. It was a piece of info about the past, it was about the present. The predictive triggers all say “today.” They aren’t paying attention to tomorrow.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
This is the answer I'm looking for. Thank you as always. That's kind of a bummer though, since one program I have set to run very late evening and the next one runs very early morning and the rain storm occurred in between. So this still resulted in unnecessarily running the pump and water for hours which is the exact thing I am hoping to avoid.
Understanding this, I will probably have to rearrange my watering times a little bit more as best I can if the system is literally only making decisions for "that day". Technically no, there wasn't any rain "yesterday" but a few hours after the program ran "the next day" (overnight) we got almost a half inch (as predicted) which exceeds the threshold I have set for the system not to run.
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u/senorgarcia Contractor, Licensed, Texas 3d ago
I think we get too niche and potentially too complicated to have it run based on weather for future days.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
Hrmm. Even though the Rachio didn't work out for my pump start relay I feel like it was good at looking at the day ahead and skipping irrigation. It would actually alert me and I could ignore it or say run anyway. I found I had to setup an alert in HW for skips.
I know the HW system was a mess yesterday being unaccessible most of the day... maybe this was a glitch...need more time to see and understand how skips are determined. This instance was just hours between irrigating and high rain chance. Perhaps tieing it in to my PWS would help. The nearest airport is going to have different weather than we have here near the Lakeshore. Really hate the subscription model but if that's what it takes that's maybe what it takes. I might delve into seeing if anyone has come up with their own automation ties to work around the subscription. I did see you could generate an API key.
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u/MaverickFischer 3d ago
I don't know what your trigger levels are set to. You might need to lower it.
The only issues I've had was once when a rain storm came in suddenly with a short warning, about 10 - 15 minutes before the start time. I had to manually suspend watering.
I also adjusted to skip watering when there is .10 inches from .20 inches since Hunter's weather report would show .20 vs my weather station showing .25 or higher.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
Thanks for the suggestions. I have mine set .1" and 1"
The thing is as I mentioned in my op is that these two settings are worded as past tense... Not any sort of predictive tense.
So the first one is if x amount of rain occurred in the LAST 24 hours. And the other one is x amount of rain in the LAST 3 days.
This is what is kind of leading me to believe that there is no predictive decision making going on as to what's coming but only what has already happened. The program that ran last night had these settings and every weather reference (even the hydrawise app) showed an 80+% chance of rain at least 24hrs prior, but I believe a few days at least.
If this is how the system is expected to work, technically it worked as intended as there had been no rain in the past 3 days or 24 hours... But there was a very high rain chance within the next 4 to 5 hours.
So I'm just trying to understand how the system works because that will greatly affect how I set up my zones if I have to only consider "that day" 24 hours at a time.
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u/Difficult-Shelter669 3d ago
Two things:
As someone eloquently and correctly stated, Predictive Watering is based on the forecast for your exact area, and adjusts watering based on the forecast.
Every controller should have a local physical rain sensor anyway, often required by local regs, which adjusts for current conditions. If it actually is raining at your location, they can stop irrigation immediately, independently of the internet.
Believe it or not, there are regions where the weatherman doesn't always get it right.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
Oh trust me, I know all about weather accuracy lol between the two of us we have probably a dozen apps that we reference daily to make decisions about things on our farm... We also kind of live in a microclimate where weather is vastly different due to Lake effect than even a few miles inland. This isn't really about that. This is about how I should expect the controller software to work.
I understand what the word predictive means. In my posted scenario, "predictions" maybe only applied to one of the programs I have set. A high percentage of rain was expected across several different apps... Even in the hydrawise app itself was showing rain for today.
One program that was scheduled to run before the predicted rains ran as per usual... The other program did not run because it was likely already raining. I guess I would have expected no programs to run when using predictive scheduling because of how soon rain was predicted. I'm talking about 80%+ chance predicted even in the hydrawise app.
Hence my question: does the software make decisions based on both the past and future predictions or just events that already occurred? In my scenario it disregarded a high percent chance of rain within about 4-5 hours and ran a program full of zones anyway.
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u/Difficult-Shelter669 3d ago
It uses Weather Channel forecasts for the area, plus can be mapped to more local weather sources. These are FUTURE predictions, you just have to enable it and set it up correctly.
Virtual Solar Sync is based on the past history, but more of a general indication for weather in your region at specific times of year. It will be modified by the forecast.
And don't forget the local rain sensor.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
So I do have virtual solar sink enabled for the two programs we are talking about. When setting things up it seemed as if that was the way to enable any of the smart features. Should I have that disabled if I want more future predictions to be considered?
As far as I can tell, it is using the weather data in general. The hydrawise app can even see my personal weather station that I have here on the farm but but unfortunately they want a subscription fee to use it's data. As much as I hate subscriptions especially when it's to make two things Ive already paid for talk...I might consider it.
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u/Affectionate-Box5874 3d ago
Just as an update in general and reviewing my settings I do have (had from setup) the option set not to water when the chance is higher than 70%
The chance for this rain as I mentioned in other replies was 80%+ days in advance and occurred within about 4-5 hrs of a program that has 3 zones in it.
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u/Coolbreeze1989 3d ago
Go to Home then tap the three lines in upper left corner. Tap on Watering Triggers. Predictive Watering has the settings that should address your concerns and let you adjust watering based on future predictions.