History of Water Usage by Zone

I know this request has been made several times in the forum, has there been any progress on this feature? It would be a great feature to know how much I am spending per zone on Water to help prioritize new landscape ideas or watering techniques. I would presume Rachio has all this data and adding an API to get this data would be pretty straight forward.

Thanks,
Jeff

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Should be easy enough to do, it knows the timing when each zone is running and either by estimation or flow sensor connected.

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Hey @jsjames, thanks for the note. No movement at the moment, but I do like this feature. Thanks for reaching out again.

Hi - Just checking to see if this feature can be added. This would be very useful in helping to optimize water usage - especially in So Cal.

Thanks,
Jeff

Hi @jsjames-

This feature has not yet been added, however we are looking to improve our usage reporting moving into this watering season. Out of curiosity, do you have a flow sensor installed, or do you just use Rachioā€™s usage estimate?

McKynzee :rachio:

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Hi McKynzee -

Thanks for the response. I donā€™t yet have a flow meter inline, but Iā€™ve looked at adding. I have however measured the GPM for each zone so even a report of number of minutes per zone, would be great.

Thanks,
Jeff

Hi @jsjames-

Got it, thatā€™s awesome! How did you measure your GPM? Did you just do a simple meter test?

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This is a good work around. Enjoy!

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Yes, currently just measure the flow at the meter.

Yep!

Water usage stats, by zone, with no flow sensor insertion effort needed, and no wires needed to serve as an antenna for otherwise damaging surge spikes into the Rachio.

Rachio would have a ā€˜calibrationā€™ screen, showing all 8 or 16 zones, with a spot to fill in GPM, as measured manually at the water meter for each zone.

Nice and simple.

Best regards,

Bill

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@a0128958 @jsjames I like the idea of hard entering your meter readings, it feels like a good compromise when trying to get accurate usage without the expense of flow sensor installation.

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Iā€™d rephrase: ā€œexcellent compromiseā€

Itā€™s a reasonably accurate solution, that avoids major effort and expense. No purchase of 8 or 16 flow sensors (and the ones made to be outside are expensive). No installation of 2 or 3 conductor made-for-underground cable to each flow sensor (a lot of work; serves as antenna to bring in bad surges to Rachio).

And with you guys being a s/w company, this should be a lot easier than a h/w solution.

This is simply incorporating ā€˜in Rachioā€™ what I outlined a few days ago ā€˜outside of Rachio.ā€™ My outside of Rachio solution is about $600 - my guess you guys can do it ā€˜in Rachioā€™ for much less.

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For what itā€™s worth, there are some of us (like me!) who purchased and installed a flow meter in the hopes that one day in the not so distant future Rachio will be able to provide us with the actual volume per zone. Wtih a baseline volume established (per zone) we can monitor (manually or through badge alerts) for events that yield >150% of our expected baseline volume, thus indicating a leak. Add to that the power and benefit of this new data - with actual volume per zone users will be empowered with the information they need to make decisions about the cost-benefit of maintaining specific plants (i.e. veggies vs. turf).

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Hi @McKynzee,

Iā€™ve also been looking for a way to download the watering history detail that is visible in the History panel. Would be great if Rachio would provide this capability.

Steve

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Even with the new update, I still donā€™t see this feature enabled. It would be extremely helpful to have this capability and canā€™t be all the complicated to implement. Can we get this capability?

Just adding another voice to the request for a download history by zone feature. Need help writing the feature? ā€œ'As a user, I can download a CSV history file with entries by zone so I can more accurately estimate my irrigation water usage and savings.ā€

The total hours history at the controller level by itself is not useful from a financial saving perspectiveā€¦ since we donā€™t pay for water by the hour.

@harcosk We have finished this feature. After we complete testing it will be released.

:cheers:

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Yes!!! :beers::beers::beers:

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@franz that is good news. Thank you. Do you have an expected release date? I appreciate the quick response.

Target is as early as possible ā€œafterā€ 4th of July week. Testing mostly finished, not releasing any code next week.

:cheers:

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