In case you’re wondering why it’s been raining pretty much the entire last month, that’s because I reactivated my smart sprinkler controls. You’re welcome.
I have two smart valves from Rachio, and they are great. I mean, there’s not much to it: a hub and two battery-powered valves that let water flow when scheduled, when you direct via the app, or when you press the button on the valve. Standard smart home shit.
But the Rachio valves replaced Rain Point valves that were of a similar vintage, and which were fucking useless. They constantly dropped the connection to the hub, which just bricked them. That meant having to rebuild the connections from scratch every time, and rebuild the schedules thereafter.
The Rachio system had been allowed to go dormant as watering wasn’t needed over the winter. Our community does not have a sprinkler system for the common areas, so they ask us homeowners to water any grass in common areas around our homes, but only during the summer (to save on water). When the ask came around to resume watering, I reactivated the sprinklers.
The valves had been sitting outside for months with dead batteries. To reactivate them, I just changed the batteries and that was it. A few minutes later they had re-established connection to the hub and were back on schedule…literally. It seems like faint praise to laud something for working as advertised but, after the Rain Point debacle, it is notable.
One thing included for free with Rachio (that was a subscription service with Rain Point) is weather tracking. If there is enough rain predicted at your location, the system will automatically skip scheduled watering and send you a notification giving you the option to water anyway.
It works really well. So well, in fact, that the system has barely run since reactivating it because it hasn’t stopped fucking raining.
