Lawn soil moisture

Have you considered the Rachio sprinker controller? I've had one at three different houses and they work great.

You do have to dial in the correct settings for each zone (soil type, sprinkler head output, area, etc.) or else it won't water enough (or it will water too much). You'll want to get some of those measuring cups with stakes and measure exactly how much water your sprinklers are emitting (and adjust them so they're as even as possible within each zone).

In my experience, it's pretty much been a set and forget type of thing. There's a HE integration, but I really couldn't find any use for it. It's one of those rare things that does what it's supposed to do without me having to fiddle with it.

And it saved me a ton of money at the one house where we had to use city water for the sprinklers. But even if you have a well, you're spending money to run the pump so there's still potential savings to be had there.

After reading through the thread and remembering my own experience, I'm going to give WET-IT a shot this Summer.

What Marc is saying about how WET-IT works (and Rachio as a comparison) matches my personal observations. Having soil measurments a few inches down in the lawn was akin to sticking my finger a few inches into the soil. Good to know, but far from the big picture. Also, what he said about the soil sensor data throwing off the algorithm explains why when I was incorperating that into Orbit B-Hyve by way of a Home Assistant integraiton, the soil readings in the app were wildly inaccurate.

My lawn did fairly well last year with just time-based watering, but my water use was astronomically high. I really believe I could have had a healthy lawn with far less water consumption, and soil moisture sensors really didn't contribute to anything but my curriosity of how the first few inches of soil measured at individual spots of my lawn.

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I considered the Rachio originally... Thought arr that's expensive.

Then I went down the custom coded esp8266 path with a few general water solenoids.. sort of a hobby.

Slowly added with Shelly devices to expand (lazier way).... These integrated with hubitat.

Started adding ecowitt soil sensors integrated into hubitat.

Then slowly replaced those original esp8266 setup with some Sonoff ZigBee battery water solenoids... Meaning all was in hubitat.

So I have probably, in hindsight, spent more than the Rachio setup taking this path :thinking:

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It is a bit expensive, but the potential savings in water and electricity costs can be substantial. At least, it was for me. As I recall, it paid for itself in about 2-3 months in reduced water bills.

What you're really paying for is the algorithms that are behind the constantly changing watering schedules. The hardware is not much different than any other wifi-capable sprinkler controller. The controller will operate for 30 days (I think) without an internet connection (using basic scheduling) but it really needs access to Rachio's servers in order to adjust your watering schedules on a real-time basis.

I have a Tempest weather station, so my schedules are based on what actually happens right here, on my property, rather than what happens in the general area. But that's not a requirement.

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