Today I’m really excited to be sharing with you a product that we’re adding to the smart technology here at our house. It’s the Rachio intelligent sprinkler controller made by rachio. Most people who have irrigation systems are uncomfortable programming on their existing controller. This controller makes it super easy because it utilizes something that everyone seems to be comfortable using nowadays. Your smart device! So using your phone or using your tablet, you can set this controller up;

• • • • You can set your run times

     

     

 

 

• • And a schedule for your controller

 

 

• • And you can also have this controller connect to the closest weather station to your home

 

 

• • And it can tell your controller whether your system needs to run or not

 

 

• • It saves water

 

 

• • It saves time

 

 

• • And it saves the hassle

 

So let’s go ahead and take a look at what’s in the box and we’ll go ahead and show you how easy it is to set it up. Okay, when we first opened up the box you’re going to find an easy install guide – the Rachio Manual. You’re going to see the front panel to the unit. If you take that off you’re going to see the wall mount that has all the terminals for where your irrigation wiring will install. It also includes a 24-volt power adapter and you’ve got a wire and a wiring guide inside the box. I’ve disconnected the power to the old controller but before I disconnect any other wires. I’m going to snap a picture of the inside of the unit here, that way when I begin installing the wires into the new system I’m making sure that they’re going back where they’re supposed to.

Rachio Installation

 

Now I’m ready to go ahead and remove the wire with all those wires lose. Now I can go ahead and start removing the unit from the wall. I’ve gone ahead and put two acres into the wall here to secure the wall mount to the wall and I’ve gone ahead and put one of the screws in just to hold it in place. Now I’m going to go ahead and take the wires from my irrigation system and I’m going to run them up through this channel here into the wall mount itself. Now with those all in place, I’ll go ahead and secure the wall mount to the wall. Now at this point, I can go ahead and reference the picture I took earlier. That way I make sure that the wires get put back to the terminals that they’re supposed to. Attaching the wires into the terminals is really easy. With the bear end of the wire, you’ll just push into the terminal and it locks in place. If your system like mine has two commons you can put 1 here on this side and one on this side, since we’re all done with the wire, let’s go ahead and put the face plate back on and we’ll go ahead and plug in the power supply. Now at this point, if you haven’t already downloaded the Rachio app you’ll need to do that.

Rachio App Integration

I’ve gone ahead and signed in to my account and I’m going to add a device. Will name it the DIY village put in your zip code continue. Now it needs to access your wi-fi, so we’ll connect to a network which you’ll have to put your wi-fi password in. Once you put that in it’s going to give you notice. You need to read and understand that. Now we’ll hit connect it’s going to flash the screen so we need to turn the screen up against the sensor down here in the corner. Basically, you’re just following the instructions on the screen. Now it’s going to try to connect to your network and we’ve succeeded. So now we’re going to follow the instructions by setting up our zones. So it’s going to go ahead and turn on each zone as we program it.

Setting Up Zones

That way we know we’re programming at the correct zone. You can change the name of the zone if you like. Now it’s going to ask you if you question like;

• • • • What’s growing in the zone -we’ve got warm season grass?

     

     

 

 

• • What kind of soil does he hit do you have?

 

 

• • How much sun does it get?

 

 

• • And what kind of irrigation head is running there – which we’ve got a rotor it?

 

 

• • And is it slightly sloped?

 

So it’s just that simple to program a zone. Here’s the display that you’ll see once you’re done programming in your zones.

Setting Up Schedules

Now it shows you your local weather forecast for the week. This is where if you need to change your weather station you can. As you scroll down you can see that there’s a watering schedule system here and if you hit edit watering schedule you can add a schedule. So we’ll do a fixed schedule or you can do flexible schedule and this is where you’d select all the different zones that you want to include in the watering schedule. Once you’ve selected your zones you’ll need to come down here to zone durations and this is where you can adjust the time that each zone runs. So if I want to decrease it I just hit the minus icon. If I want to increase it I just hit the plus icon once I’m done. Scroll down here and I can set the start time how many days a week it would repeat and then once I’m done I’ll just hit save and there’s just a quick look at how to set up the irrigation controller by Rachio a very cool and innovative irrigation controller. See more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKYzFhTkELs