That Time We Talked About Rachio Sprinkler Controller

This is episode number 45 of The Homeowner Show. Whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We are glad that you could join us today because we got a good show for you guys.

Yeah.

We're excited about it.

I am enthralled, even. Well, this is one of those episodes that I— we've talked about doing this for a while, but we just got to kind of have the right season.

That's right. Yeah, we need to strike just the right moment.

Yeah, well, we're probably late for that, but we're still in the right season.

No, I'd say that's just the right moment for us.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, we're right on time for the Homeowner Show. Okay.

Yeah, there you go.

If you haven't yet, go ahead and hit the subscribe button in whatever platform you're using, because it's your favorite. You're not going to change. It's yours.

Exactly.

Not even Kevin, because his is terrible. He's sticking with it. He's going down with the ship.

Well, yeah. It's working so far.

It's a matter of pride at this point.

Absolutely.

But, man, we also have some cool episodes coming up.

Yeah.

We wanted to make sure and give everybody a heads-up of some topics that we've got coming up, in case you have questions or comments or even concerns. You know, Kevin and Craig, we just really have to talk about your decision-making process.

If they want to start scheduling for us, then by all means.

We are looking for one right now.

That's right.

The pay is meager.

It's not worth it, but it sure would be fun.

The accolades abound.

Well, yeah, we'd give people a shout-out anytime.

Yeah.

For almost anything.

Stupid human trick. Just send us the video. We'd love to see it. Kevin would love to see it.

I'll give you a shout-out.

So, man, we've got a mortgage consultant coming on the show. We have a financial planner coming on the show.

Oh, that'll be good.

We have some guys from a marketing group, which sounds Which may sound odd, but we're actually really excited about talking to these guys because we want to talk about how do you find, you know, good people to work on your house with all of the influx of, you know, Facebook and Instagram ads and Twitter ads and like all these marketing platforms that we now have that we're, you know, honestly we're using them to find people to take care of our homes. But how do we find the right people to even like, how do we sort through all that mess and find the right person?

I mean, we're used to that. I mean, so many of us now use like Amazon. And even if you're not using Amazon to purchase something, a lot of times you go look for something just to read the reviews.

Right.

And so that's kind of what we're talking about with that.

Yeah. And I don't know if you know this, Amazon actually has a service end of their platform now where you can—

Really?

Yeah, you can hire like a sheetrock guy, you can hire a window guy, you can hire a pest control guy, you can hire what— yeah, our company's been reached out by them several times to, you know, join the family. Interesting.

Yeah, well, I know you can do like housekeepers with them too.

Yeah. Okay, different stuff like that. And sometimes there's things that you can buy that, you know, you might want someone else to install. Yeah, so they have those people on there as well.

Okay, cool.

Um, so anyway, we, we can, we can go down that rabbit hole some other time. Yes, today we have our own rabbit hole.

We do. I will say though, I'm interested to talk to the mortgage person, but It's just gonna be you.

Well, we might have a guest host.

Okay. So, well, it won't be me.

It won't be you.

I'm gonna be out of town.

So, and depending on how good they are, it might not be you when you get back.

Totally fine. Uh, I'll be an independent contractor with someone else.

Well, you know, you could always, you know, jump into that scheduling role.

Oh yeah. That's because that's currently available.

And there's— we don't discriminate against beards.

So that's good. That's good. Mine's shorter than it used to be. So, all right.

So what are we doing? What's been going on with you, man? I mean, you've had a, you've had a lot going on, man, but you had like, you had, you had a fun homeowner week from what I understand.

Man, life happens. I'll just tell you this.

And that's because we restrict the language here at the Homeowner Show.

That's right. Yes. We don't want that explicit.

That's right. We don't need those additional tags.

No, we don't. Um, You know, sometimes you just have those weeks where you feel like things just don't go right.

Yeah.

This was one of those weeks for me. I needed a lot of things to go right just because of timing. Um, a lot— there's just a lot going on. Summer is a really busy time for me. But, um, so I'm, I'm out getting ready for, for something I've got going on, and, um, my wife calls me and she says, so we got a problem.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, okay, what kind of problem? She said, well, um, our water heater is leaking.

Mm.

I said, you've got to be kidding me. Um, my initial thought that went through my head was stupid home warranty again. I mean, you— we've just talked about that not too long ago about, about my feelings about our home warranty company. Um, but we still have service for another week. I'm not kidding. We're, we're up. Our contract is up.

That's right.

In a week.

These guys are finished.

They're done. And I'm now got a problem.

So. Although you've made it known now for a few weeks that your home apparently has Problems. Well, you know, and we're broadcasting this out to the world. And so like, you may have limited choices as to who's going to warranty your home going forward now.

Definitely who's going to buy my home.

Who's this, Kevin Hackett? Get out of here.

Get out of here. Well, I think, I think this is something that I just kind of want to mention for a moment. I feel like everybody has these problems at some point. It just never is going to happen at a convenient time.

Right.

Which is one of the reasons you just have to be prepared. If you're choosing to own a home, you have to be prepared to deal with it. Whether or not you're doing that by just having an extra savings, you know, emergency fund or something laying around or something, you need to find a way that if something like this happens, that you can deal with it. Our way of dealing with it, home warranty. Um, so First of all, I'm not at home. I'm a good 45 minutes away, and I've still got a lot going on that day.

Just real quick, this may actually be a good survey to take from our audience. From what we gathered, I would say a majority of our listeners own a home.

I would think that there are a lot of people that would not listen to our show simply because it doesn't apply to me.

When this episode airs, we should put up a survey.

Okay.

That— do you have a home warranty? Yeah, that would be— I would actually be interested to know the answer to that question.

It would honestly be interesting to add something to that. Do you own a home warranty and you're out of the first year of owning your home? Because a lot of real estate agents will add a home warranty just to kind of entice the deal just a little bit. But then after the year, do you get it again?

Right?

Do you re-up? Exactly.

Yeah.

That'd be interesting. So anyway, so continue. You know, I'm not gonna walk you through the whole saga. I will tell you this though, um, there are a couple of things that I learned, um, and it's not something I didn't know, it's just I never had to do this before. I've never had a problem with a water heater before. Um, so I'm trying to coach my wife since I'm, I'm not there. I'm like, okay, put me on FaceTime, let's, let's see if we can see what's happening here. So basically Um, I'm, I'm thankful because a lot of homes around here have their water heater in their attic, right? Uh, and that could sometimes be above their second floor, you know? So that's a—

Yes.

That's a pain. Ours, thankfully, we only have a one-story house and it's on the ground level, so that, that's at least nice. It's air-conditioned down there, it's easily accessible, and when a leak happens, you know it's, it's there.

Yeah.

So, the problem is that we've got a pan underneath it, underneath the water heater, and it's supposed to drain out of your house by code. Ours doesn't drain out of the house, and you told me that yours doesn't either.

Right.

A lot of homes don't. They should, but they don't.

Which, if anyone listens to this show for any amount of time, it's no surprise that my thing doesn't do what it's supposed to do.

Whatever the thing is.

Whatever it is. It's not going to do what it's supposed to do.

No, it's not. So, um, she noticed— she hears water, which you shouldn't hear water from your water heater, and she opens it up. Sure enough, the pan is almost overflowing. Keyword, almost. Thank goodness I've got a Shop-Vac close. So she, you know, sucks the water out of there, and it just, you know, keeps filling up. So I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. Shut the water off at the valve. She cannot get it to shut off. Um, you know, my wife's not the, uh, heftiest, burliest gal. No, no, she's a little tiny petite thing, and, uh, she couldn't get it. Um, I think she got a little more leverage by getting up higher. She got a step stool and then, you know, was able to finally get it turned off. Um, and we, we opened up the pressure

release valve. Um, and, and then I kind of, you know, okay, just kind of monitor it, watch it. Well, she had to leave the house, so it's kind of like, OK, we'll do the best we can. So, call the home warranty.

Again.

Again. Because I'm— I mean, here's the thing. I've got a week left on this. Water heaters are not inexpensive. I mean, if you just go look at a box store somewhere, a water heater, which we have a 50-gallon water heater, right, and it's natural gas, to replace that, I mean, you're looking at a minimum of $500 to $600.

Sure.

And they're gonna go up from there. So, uh, I, I just know this is— I gotta use home warranty on this. So I call them, they say, okay, we'll put a rush on this because it's, you know, leaking inside your house, it's a problem, we'll put a rush on it. Um, and so I get a text message about an hour later saying someone from this company is going to call you within 3 hours. Well, I never hear from said company. They did, however, tell me— the warranty company told me you can use your own plumber if you want to. Um, it's up to you, but you got to get it reimbursed. It's just a, it's a whole thing, you know, if it's over a certain amount of money, you know, you're gonna have to get it pre-approved, all this kind of stuff.

So I, uh, I immediately thought, okay, well, if I can get this done myself, I'm calling my good friend Ryan, Ryan Burke.

Yeah.

We've talked to him on the show. He's an awesome guy and does plumbing really well. Call him. And he says, dude, I don't work with home warranties. And I'm like, you know what? I wish I didn't either, but here we are. Um, and so I said, okay, no problem, I'll just wait on this other company. They never called me. So the next day— here's the problem amongst everything else— my daughter is having surgery the next morning, right?

Right.

So I, you know, nothing can happen in a timely fashion. And so, um, I expect they're going to call me the next morning because that night I called their emergency line And I think it was the owner answered actually. And he said, hey, we'll get you someone dispatched early in the morning. We'll get someone out there to take care of you. Okay. I'm home with my daughter from her surgery by 10 o'clock and no one's called me. I know they've been open a couple hours at least at this point. No one's called me. So I called the home warranty company back and I said, you know what? I'm gonna take care of this myself. So I called Ryan back. I said, dude, here's the deal. I, it's, I gotta get this done. It's

just, we don't have any hot water. It's probably gonna be through the weekend before we can get this done. You gotta come help me. He said, sure, no problem. And guys, I'm gonna put another shout out for Ryan Burke and the Burke Family Plumbing because within 2 and a half hours of me calling him, I had a new water heater.

That's crazy.

Yeah. I mean, it's that, that's an insanely quick response time.

Yeah.

Um, and, and they just did a fantastic job. They came in, immediately looked at it and said, yep, you got a rusted out water heater. It's gotta go. The outside looks great cuz it's in my first floor, you know? Yeah. Looks fantastic. Um, but the inside's rusted out. So, um, one thing that I did figure out that I didn't know is I figured out how to drain it. the night before because it was just filling up, still filling up the pan. I was having to, you know, use a Shop-Vac every couple hours to get it out. And, uh, all you gotta do is easy, just hook up a water hose to it and open the

valve, which you have to do with a screwdriver, and drain it out your house, which took about an hour for 50 gallons to go through a water hose. Took a while. Um, so that was already done, uh, but 2 and a half hours later they come in Bada bing, bada bang, done. And it's bada bing, bada boom. Bada boom, not bada bang?

No.

Bada bing, bada boom?

It's right out.

Okay, well, I'm still—

I will not stand for such shenanigery.

I'm reeling over here still, so I'm just trying to— I'm just trying to say words. So anyway, The problem is now I gotta fight for my money, um, which, which, you know, honestly, uh, you know, Ryan, Ryan and his company gave me a great deal. And so, um, I'll be surprised if the warranty company would be able— would find a way to not pay for it. But, um, at this point, you're not gonna hold your breath. Not holding my breath, but they're gonna have to pay something on it. So, um, better than nothing, probably paid for my home warranty. in, you know, plus in this one call. So, okay, I still don't like this company. I'm going with a different company, but they're gonna wind up paying something. I just don't know what it is

yet. But man, it, it's just a pain not having something that you're used to. I mean, you know, it's one thing to, to just never have something and to live without it, but once you have it and you're used to it, um, Man, it just— it's a convenience that you take for granted. So what we wound up doing is we wound up boiling water and, and filling up the bathtub with cold water plus boiling water to make warm water in order to give our kids a bath that night. So it worked, which is kind of what they used to do.

Sure.

Before hot water heaters were a thing. And so anyway, it's nice to have the luxuries, but Man, it sure is frustrating whenever you got to deal with it.

It's always frustrating when something breaks, man.

And it— man, that's the thing is like things are gonna break.

At the most inconvenient time.

Absolutely, every single time.

Um, why? Because your house is a jerk.

Yeah, it's like it doesn't respect me at all. No, I mean, I try to take care of it.

Why should it? It's bigger than you.

Yeah, it's a lot.

It's a giant bully.

That's true, that's true.

So anyway, um, but we love them anyway. We do.

Honestly, I'm still an advocate of owning a home.

Even after all this?

Yeah. There's a lot of people that say, that's the reason I don't own a home. I don't want to deal with that stuff. I don't want to have to pay for it if it comes up. At the end of the day, it's still worth it, in my opinion.

Because it's yours.

It's mine. I can do whatever I want to with it. If I choose not to have a water heater, I can not have a water heater.

That's right. Um, just bathe in the cold like real men.

Well, in the summertime here in Houston, the, the water's not all that cold. Even the cold water is kind of lukewarm.

All day to warm up.

That's right. So anyway, how are things with you, man?

Just, I mean, crazy busy. Doing really good. Yeah, having fun making the show.

Cool.

So, but we're actually, I mean, today we're, we're talking about another fun device that you actually have in your home.

Yeah, so, you know, I, I like having smart devices. I think there's of value to them. You know, our good friend Micah would say, you know, it's just another wiretap. Yeah, but, and it may be, but this is something we talked about back on the Master Gardener episode, which I think was episode 26.

Oh, it's been a while.

Yeah, so it really has been. So one of the things we talked about with the Master Gardeners, we talked about watering and how you water your lawn and most people overwater their lawn, right? Or completely underwater their lawn.

In fact, I think I remember the reason that I really liked that episode is you got scolded.

I got scolded more than once. I think she was on me, and rightfully so, mainly because I'm an idiot.

It wasn't undeserved. It was just fun.

Yeah.

Well, maybe not for you.

No, I like it. I'm used to it. And I kind of— if people are comfortable scolding me, I'm good with it.

All right.

So, but one of the things that, um, that he said in that episode is he said, you know, a lot of people will water like 3 times a week or maybe 4 times a week, maybe even every day.

Right.

And they'll water for like, you know, 10 minutes per zone. Um, or they'll just stick a, uh, on the opposite end of that, they'll just stick a water sprinkler out there and turn it on and 4 hours later go, oh, I forgot to turn it off. Um, and one of the things that he said was your, your yard really does best if you do a good soak, um, you know, once or twice a— probably once a week, maybe even less than that, depending on how much rain you're getting and all that kind of stuff. But you water for longer, get the soil, um, wet deeper so the roots can grow deeper.

Right.

Because otherwise, if you're just wetting the top of the soil, it's only going to grow as deep as the roots can get through, you know. So, um, So one of the things that you and I talked about, um, doing an episode on sometime was a smart water sprinkler, right? Well, it just so happens that I have one, um, and I did some research on, on them before I bought them, uh, before I bought it, and I went with the Rachio, right? R-A-C-H-I-O.

Um, and these are the same ones that they use at the Montgomery County Extension Center.

Exactly. Those guys, exact same ones. So, um, there's a lot of features that these things have, but Um, here's the deal. If you have a water sprinkling system, you have some sort of controller that controls that thing. And, and most of the time, a home builder is going to put in just a regular manual, uh, controller.

Like a Rain Bird or something like that.

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with those if you understand what you're doing, if you know your yard, if you know the soil, if you know a lot of different things about your what you're trying to do, then you can schedule it and it's fine. Um, the problem comes whenever you don't have something like a rain gauge, uh, that is hooked up to those things, because then your controller has no idea if it's manual whether or not it should water or not.

Right.

And what a lot of people do, because I, I was this person before I bought this, It would rain all night and then I'd wake up the next morning and my water sprinklers were going.

Yep.

And I'm like, idiot, here I am, forgot to go out and skip it.

Right.

It happens all the time. You see, you see water sprinklers going in people's yards and the night before it rained, you know, an inch and a half.

Yeah.

It's like, oh man.

I've watched them go off during hurricanes.

See, that's just silly because there's a better option.

Right.

The better option is to get a device like this that is smart. It knows if it's going to rain or if it has rained, don't water. It knows how much to water without me really doing anything. One of the things I thought we'd do is go through and talk about some of the features that these things have.

Right.

if, if you go with just a regular smart controller, um, you know, something inexpensive, it's probably gonna work with any sprinkler system that's out there. Uh, they're pretty universal and it's gonna support Wi-Fi.

Okay.

Now what it does after that, your, your options are probably pretty limited. Uh, the Rachio, on the other hand, has quite a few options. Uh, I've got the generation 2, the second generation one. They've come out since I bought mine with a third generation. The difference in price is somewhat significant. I think you can get the Generation 2 still for like $150. That's not bad. It's really not, whenever I'm about to explain.

Let me, let me just full disclosure out here. I've never had a sprinkler system or an irrigation system.

Sure.

My version is the hose.

Yeah.

With the oscillating head.

Yeah. Those are good.

Those are good.

They work.

I like putting, putting a sprinkler system on this place.

Oh, it'd be insane.

I might as well just build another house.

Yeah. I will tell you this before we get into like some, some more of this. The last house I had, which was the only other house that I've ever owned, it didn't have a water sprinkler system either.

Okay.

And so I, I kind of rigged one. Orbit makes a, a 4— they make a couple of different zones, but what I had was a 4-zone, um, system. And you just hook water hoses up to it and put your sprinklers out there, and it waters on a timer.

Okay.

Similar to what just a regular controller would do if you had in-ground. I just would move them around when I needed to move around. So it worked. It was kind of a workaround rather than having to spend thousands of dollars on an in-ground But then, whenever we moved, our house just happened to have one, which was a little perk for us.

Did it already have the smart?

It did not.

So, this is something you upgraded to?

This is something we upgraded to.

Nice!

I just really wanted to not have to worry about it. I didn't want to wake up in the morning and be frustrated at myself because I'm watering whenever we clearly got rain the night before. The second generation, you can get it for about $150. To go with the third generation, you're talking closer to like $230.

Okay.

Um, but when we get into some of this, I, I think you'll see that it's, it's worth it. Um, first of all, you can install these things. I, I installed it. I'm, I'm not super electrically savvy. Um, but I was able to install this thing in about 20 minutes.

Okay.

It's pretty simple.

Um, does it just plug in the wall?

It's— yeah, I mean, you take the other one out and you put the new one in, you screw it into the wall, and then there's, there's wires you have to plug into it. And, and it— they're—

It tells you which ones to do.

And they're labeled, it tells you what to do, and it's, it's pretty simple. So, um, one of the things that's nice about it is that you get an app on your phone.

Okay.

And so with the app on your phone, you really have to have the app on your phone because if you don't, you can't set the thing up. it has no display on it. It's just a piece of a— it's just hardware, right? It is. So you have to have the smartphone, um, to, to do this. But, um, with that you get a lot of things. We'll talk about that later. Um, it is compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, um, and there's some other platforms out there that it'll work with. The second generation, the one I have, does not work with Apple HomeKit. Um, but the 3rd generation does. So if you have HomeKit, um, and you're a HomeKit-only home, um, then you

might consider that one just for that reason.

That being said, if I understand you correctly, 2nd generation will work with Google Alexa, some— what would you say, Nest as well?

Yeah, Nest also works with it.

So it works with those but not with Apple as far as like their HomeKit. 3rd generation does all the previous ones plus HomeKit.

Correct.

Gotcha.

And, and honestly, I don't really know why that's necessary.

Okay.

Um, other than if you want to say, you know, Alexa, start—

Water the lawn.

Yeah. Um, which you can do, or you can tell it to stop.

I would enjoy that.

Yeah, but, but really, like, how— I mean, how often are you trying to do that, right? It's fun once or twice, but after that it's like, yeah, unless you're— it's really doing something you don't want it to, how hard is it to open up your phone and be like, stop, right? You know? So, um, so anyway, it— one of the things that, that this specific, uh, one does is it connects to a local weather station. So, um, It's got weather intelligence, uh, with regard to rain, freezing.

Back up for just a second. Okay, connects to a local weather station. You're not talking about like Channel 2?

No, no, no, I'm talking like a weather, uh, hub of some sort. And there's various ones, um, you know, some cities have multiple weather stations, um, some have just one, uh, but you're gonna be able to ping a weather station Somewhere. Somewhere. Uh, radio stations have them, um, airports obviously have them, right? Um, lots of different places have these, uh, and it's kind of got them programmed in to say, hey, here's, here's where they are, and it connects to them wirelessly.

Which ones? It'll let you pick which one you want?

You can pick whichever one you want. Um, and one of the things I will tell you is, um, the one that, that mine pings is in Conroe. We live in Montgomery, and it's probably 10 miles away.

Okay.

Which honestly, you know, part of you goes, okay, 10 miles is not that big of a deal, but 10 miles can make a huge difference in whether it rains or doesn't rain at your house.

Right.

Um, so that, that's, that's one thing that the 3rd generation is, is better at. It, uh, the 3rd generation has a little bit better, um, capability of finding a more local weather station, uh, weather hub, and it does a little bit better of pinging exactly where you're at. Um, so its intelligence is a little bit better on the weather side. Um, but I mean, it, it works with, you know, whether it's raining, if it's freezing, it's not going to try to run water through your pipes whenever it's too cold. Um, if the wind is too high and it's just going to blow the you know, the water onto the concrete or the road, it's not gonna water.

Um, and, and so it just takes the—

it's gonna respect the tornado warnings.

It is absolutely gonna respect the weather in general. So that's, that's a really good thing. Um, you can get them in either 8 or 16 zone models.

Yeah.

Uh, mine, 8 was plenty. We've got 7 zones. Um, so 8 was plenty. Uh, but you know, if you've got a larger yard or if you've got like a lot of flower beds or zones specifically, you might want a 16. And then after that, even, even regular controllers are either 8 or 16. So you, you probably have 2 if you have more zones than that. Um, and then they've got a waterproof, or like a weatherproof enclosure. Um, so, so if they're outside— mine's in the garage, but some of these things are actually in a place you can get moisture. So, so that's helpful. Um, that's, that's kind of what the second generation offers. Now the third

generation has a few other things. So I already mentioned the weather capabilities are a little bit enhanced. Um, and also they're easy connectors for the wiring, which it is easy. You just literally slip them into the connector and it locks into place. Um, they support different gauges, so, so they, they support heavier gauge and smaller gauge wiring. So, okay, if your wiring's weird, you might want to go with the, with the Generation 3 just because it's got more options on it.

Yeah, it's a little more flexible.

It's more flexible.

Yeah.

Um, on the unit there's also a run, pause, and skip button, which the 2nd generation is just a piece of hardware. The 3rd generation has a button that'll let you do that. Still no screen on there, but it at least has that if you're outside or something and You see it and you want to do it.

If you still have a little tactile left in your system, then you got that.

Hit the button, right? And I mentioned that it works with HomeKit as well as the others, uh, the other platforms. But here's where it really gets interesting. It is compatible with Rachio's wireless flow meter. Now, if you don't know what a flow meter is, then, uh, you're in good company because I didn't know what this thing was either. But You can, for an additional, uh, additional piece of hardware, you can get this wireless flow meter. But it does, uh, some pretty cool things. The first thing that it does that I think is hugely helpful is it's got leak detection and blockage notifications. So if you've got a blockage or a leak in your system somewhere,

it's gonna go, wait a minute, you're pushing more water than you normally do, and it's gonna notify you.

Mm-hmm.

You're not pushing enough water in order to, to do what you're supposed to do, and it'll send you a notification. And that's whenever you call, uh, I forgot his name, the guy that we did leak detection with.

Oh, Jim.

Yeah, Jim. Call Jim and, uh, he'll tell you where the leak is. You can get that thing fixed and then you're not waiting, you know, months before you figure out what's going on.

Yeah, it's, uh, Jim over at JC's Leak Detection.

That's it. Yeah, that's it. Uh, so it's also got a low-flow leak detection Um, so, you know, again, if it's just a very small leak but you're still getting a leak, it's still able to detect it. So it's kind of a cool feature. It's also got instant zone shutoff that's triggered by leak detection. So if you get a leak, it's immediately going to shut that zone off and it's not going to start again until you tell it start.

Okay.

So that's kind of a feature that Again, if you've got a leak, um, the, the problem with, with regular controllers is it's still gonna try to push water through there.

Mm-hmm.

And if it does, you're just wasting water and you're probably creating a bigger problem than you had. Cuz leaks are, leaks are a lot bigger problem than just, oh, I've got a hole in my pipe.

Yeah.

I mean, you could create much, you can create, create foundation issues. Um, lots of things can happen, uh, with leaks.

So you can ruin your lawn with a bad leak.

Absolutely. You can. A lot of people— I mean, we've got a lot of these, uh, sago palms in our, in our yard, uh, which are kind of small palm trees. They're only, you know, a couple of feet tall.

Yeah.

Uh, but those things can be like $400 or $500 apiece from what I understand. They're, they're very expensive. But those things, again, you get too much water to some of those, these things, and it's really expensive for a plant designed to stab you in the eye. And they do that often. Yeah, they're the worst. They kind of look pretty though, so we didn't dig them up.

Also because they were in defense mode.

Yeah, no kidding. You can't get in there. Uh, the, the other thing, uh, that it, that it says, um, that it has as a feature is, uh, precise outdoor water usage monitoring. So basically it's going to tell you this is how much water you're using through your sprinkler system. Um, and the reason that I can see that that would be helpful is so, you know, you get a bill all of a sudden from the water company and you're going, this is not— I mean, this is a lot of money. You can at least look at your, uh, water sprinkler system and go, oh, we watered a lot last, last month. I did that. Yeah. And, and so you can kind of have an idea of, okay, if I want to

be smart about how I monitor uh, how I do all of this with my sprinkler. Yeah, um, you know, you have an idea. Now again, this flow meter is, is pretty much all related to leaks, but it is an additional piece of hardware. But the second generation, you can't add it on. You have to have the third generation in order to add that on.

Yeah, so like with the flow meter and the weather synchronization, all this kind of Like, does it have where you can adjust it for your lawn? Meaning, you know, say it rains 2 inches, right?

Yeah.

And you're like, well, that's not quite enough water for what I wanted to put down. I still want you to go ahead and do this.

Absolutely.

So, but like, look, if it hits 3 inches, then we're a no-go. Sure. You could, you could be as specific as that.

Well, so there's— so when— now we're getting into how this thing functions from the app perspective.

Okay.

So you download the app, you set up a login, all that kind of stuff, and immediately it's going to find out, oh, you've got an 8-zone second generation. So it knows exactly what you've got, and so it starts taking you through a setup process. You need to have a little bit of time. I think it took me about 30 minutes to, to set this up.

Okay.

And you need to, you need to have a little bit of information with you. Um, so the first thing it does is it goes through and it says, okay, if you've got 8 zones, but you've only got— like, for us, we've got 7 zones plugged in. So it starts asking you in every single zone what you have in that zone. So for instance, for us, zone 1 is grass, zone 2 grass, zone 3 grass, zone 4— now we get into flower beds. And so 4, 5, and 6 are flower bed specific. And then, um, we actually have a 7th zone that is in our courtyard. I've mentioned our courtyard before.

Mm-hmm.

And it— we never use it, so it's just completely shut off. Uh, but in this setup process, it's pretty cool. It asks you a lot of questions about what you have planted there. So for instance, it's going to ask you, do you have grass here? Yes, I've got grass here. What kind of grass? Because different types of grass take different amounts of water.

Yes.

And same thing with flower bed. It'll ask you, okay, you've got a flower bed, I understand that, but like Is this full sun flower bed stuff or is it, you know, shaded? And how much water does it actually need based on what you have planted there? So again, with your regular controller, you don't have this option. It's either on or it's off, and you set it to do a certain amount based on how much you think it should have as far as the water goes. So you're asking the question about If it doesn't water enough, or if it waters, you know, if there's more rain than what you need, how does that work? So one of the features that it has, and you kind of have to understand a little bit about, about rain and how

much it rained the, the night that you're talking about. So let's say it rained 2 inches and you really wanted to water. Um, most likely it's gonna go, oh, it rained 2 inches. your soil may not need it, right? But if you just want it, you can at any point, uh, tell Alexa if you've got it connected to water, right? And you can tell it which zones, uh, you can tell it how long you want it to water. And you can also do that from the app. So in the app, you can go in and say just run a cycle. And if it runs a cycle, you set however many minutes. So let's say you want to run for 30 minutes

for each cycle. just set it and it'll go.

Yeah.

It's pretty easy to do that. You can also select which zones you want to do and change different times for each one of those. Um, and, and that's just on a manual basis if you want to do that. So you have the option. I don't think there's an option in there that says I need it to water this amount no matter what, and so if it didn't get that amount, then it will water more. So I think that's your question.

Yeah.

And so, but you can, you can hook up a rain gauge to these things.

Okay.

They've got a, a wire for that. If you've got a wire for your rain gauge, um, then you can just plug it in. It's gotta—

So it doesn't have to be a Rachio rain gauge. It's just gotta be a one that's got an electronic—

Exactly.

Meter reader, whatever, however that works.

Exactly. Okay. So it'll know more accurately than the weather, the weather station. Yeah, but for me, I don't have one of those and I've not gone to the trouble to install one. And so it just reads the weather station.

Come on, Kevin, the people need to know.

Well, show your rain gauge. Well, they're gonna have to wait for another day. Um, so it is nice to, to know that even if you don't have a rain gauge, then your system is smart enough to kind of know, oh, we got rain in the forecast, um, and, and it'll adjust accordingly. Um, But one of the things that's really, really nice about this thing is you have options as to how you are going to allow it to water. So it'll work just like your old manual one did, and you can input every zone, the amount of minutes, and then the days that you want it to go. So if you wanted to go Monday, Wednesday,

Friday for 20 minutes apiece every day of the year, You can do that.

Yeah.

But if you do that, don't get this thing. I mean, it's not— I mean, yes, you can do that with it, but you can do that with a manual one that costs a whole lot less money than this thing.

Right.

Um, what you're really getting this for is the option to change the amount that these things water. And honestly, here's the thing. For me, I don't have any idea how much I should water my lawn. Most people don't. I'm not a master gardener. If you're a master gardener and you're listening to this, you're going, oh, Kevin's just an idiot. Yeah, go refer to the episode and you'll find out I am. And so that's why I have this thing, because I have no idea how long to, to water this stuff. But there are options inside of the app if you go to your calendar settings and you, uh, basically tell it how much you want it to, uh, to water. So the first

option it has— so there's 3 options. The first one is just a fixed, um, a fixed time and number of days. It's what we just talked about— this long for this number of days. Um, and, and that is pretty predictable.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, you know exactly that it's gonna do this amount. The next option they have is a little bit more, um, of a savings to you, and it's, and it's going to be a little bit less predictable. And, um, here, here's the, um, the description in the app. It says, uh, watering frequency and duration automatically update every month to adjust for seasonal changes. So what you're giving up at this point is control.

Yeah.

You're giving up the control of saying, I want it to water this amount for this number of days. Um, at this point, every month it's going to go in and it's going to say, okay, We should probably water twice a week here, 3 times a week here, and it just sets a schedule every month based on the month and based on the weather and different things like that. So, um, you're getting a monthly flex schedule versus, uh, the next one, which is the most savings that you're gonna get. Uh, we'll, we'll talk about the savings in just a minute. Um, versus predictability. And, and this is the one that I have mindset on. Um, and I'll tell you, I started off with the Flex Monthly because I wasn't ready to

give up the control yet, but I went to the Flex Daily. Um, and here's what it, here's what it, uh, says as far as the description goes. Zones are watered independently based on weather and zone settings. Watering frequency changes dynamically from day to day and it requires advanced zone configuration. So whenever you're going and you're setting all of the zones up, this is where you have to put in what type of grass you've got, what type of soil you've got, you know, is it flowers or, you know, what are you, what are you watering? So it'll say, listen, today your flower beds don't need watered, so we're not going to water it.

Yeah.

Um, but your grass, it needs watered and it needs watered this amount. And I'll tell you, I've noticed it'll, it'll send me a push notification if you want it to. Um, to tell me whenever it's watered. And it'll say, you know, these zones ran. And sometimes it's like, it's weird, it'll run for an hour and then it'll stop for 30 minutes and it'll run for another hour. And again, it's getting that deep soak saturation.

Saturation.

And so it is interesting. I would never have thought to do something like that to where it's like, you know, give it time to kind of rest. Yeah. You know, before you water it again. Um, but it knows to do that. It's just, it's smart. It's why they call it a smart sprinkler, uh, Yeah. controller. Um, so it, it does a better job of knowing what your grass needs. And, you know, there are days on end whenever it doesn't water, and then there are days whenever it waters back to back to back, um, because it's on this Flex Daily and it knows what it's done and what it should do. And it's, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, honestly.

So, uh, there are other things that you can do within the app. I mean, it's got, it's got a weather forecast and you can tell it, you know, to run or if you want it to skip. It tells you when the next— so, so for mine, uh, right now it tells me, uh, that it's gonna be a week before it waters again.

Okay.

And part of that is because it's looking at, um, because it's looking at the rain.

Been a Terribly wet summer.

It's been really wet for us. The other thing is, it always seems to water sometime between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00.

In the afternoon?

In the morning.

In the morning. OK. That makes a lot of sense.

It does make sense. A lot of people think, it's really hot outside. I should water my grass.

If you want to burn it.

Exactly. That's not a good idea. Again, I don't have to worry about when it does it. it knows when the best time is. Sometimes it'll do it earlier, sometimes it'll do it later. It just— it's interesting. It's different every single time. But so, so when it— I mentioned savings. So this is really interesting to me. Um, so whenever I put this— before I put this in, our water bill in the summertime, uh, honestly, our water is really not all that expensive, but we would, we would regularly have $100, $110, $115 water bills in the summer.

Sure.

Uh, which is probably— is there probably some people out there going, dang, that's really cheap. Um, but I'll tell you right now, our average water bill, um, is about $65 a month.

Okay.

And, and we're watering as much as we need to. My grass is— it grows like crazy.

You were telling me just today how healthy—

It grows unbelievably fast. And so, you know, that's an— that's a savings of like $40, $50 a month.

Yeah.

That I'm getting out of this thing. Um, so you paid for it in 3 months? Absolutely.

Yeah.

Worth it. Absolutely worth it. Go get one. If you have, if you have a sprinkler system, I'm telling you, you will save money by investing $150 to $230 in this thing. And I don't even have all of the features. I mean, I don't have a rain gauge hooked up to it. I don't have the 3rd generation that does the leak detection. I don't have any of those things. I'm sure that at some point there's a— I mean, again, you're 4 or 5 months into, into that thing, you know, and, and you've potentially got more options than what, uh, what I've got with mine.

So, um, let me run this scenario by you.

Yeah.

So say, you know, you, you, you're not on the, you know, the app-enabled smart plan. You've designed this whole thing yourself. You know, you know what days and how long and sure. So, you know, you decide to pack up the family for a fun family weekend in Branson.

Yeah.

You know, you're out of town.

Yeah.

And you get up, you're having your morning coffee.

You're going to see Shoji Tabuchi.

Something, I don't know. You're on your phone.

Yeah.

You're, you know, checking to see if people still like you on Facebook or something.

Yeah.

And you open the weather app.

Yes.

And you look at home and you're like, oh my gosh, It's a— the bottom's about to drop out. It's gonna be raining all week that we're gone. Good thing we plan to be gone outta town, but oh my gosh, I'm supposed to be watering my lawn this week.

Yep.

Can I turn it off right there?

Yes.

From my phone?

Yes.

When I'm in Branson?

Anytime you want to.

That's fantastic.

It is. And, and, and honestly, I mean, here's, here's what's crazy. I look at the app right now and it tells me that in my, my first zone, zone 1, It tells you what my current soil moisture is based on how much it's rained and how much it knows it waters. It's currently at 35%. It was last run on July 12th, and it's next going to run on July 24th.

I'll tell you what would be a cool feature for these things to have, and maybe they may already be working on this, but if you're not, here's a good idea for you, Rachio. You just tell me what the moisture level is in the soil. Like if you actually had like a physical device that you could stick in the ground.

Yep.

That would actually give you that data as well as like the pH levels.

Yeah, that'd be cool, man.

Yeah.

Because right now for us, and I don't know what, what the options are across the country, but for us, you can take a soil sample and send it off to Texas A&M.

Yeah.

And get that information. It's going to take you a couple of weeks, but they'll give it to you. They'll give it to you.

They have big fun with that.

Absolutely. But yeah, I mean, my, my zone 2 tells me I've got 58% moisture and I don't know what the difference is. I don't know why, but it knows. And, um, yeah, stick a finger in there. That would be— yeah, exactly. That would be a really cool feature though.

Yeah. Getting that, you know, that's, you know, additional data is always helpful.

More, more data gives you—

Even if you don't know what to do with it, it's like, I know what it is.

Yeah. I don't know how that's helpful, but the Rachio does. And it changes, it changes when it waters. Um, and so I'll tell you, man, I, I'm, I'm a huge fan of this thing. And anybody that I can tell, you know, go buy one of these things, do it. Go buy one.

Can you buy these on Amazon?

Sure.

Okay. But you could also get them from like Lowe's, Home Depot, McCoy's.

Yeah.

And what are some of the other ones? I don't know. There's hardware stores out there. Go find one.

Ace.

Yeah, Ace. There you go. Yeah, that's another one.

Yeah, you can buy them, uh, on— in, in stores. Uh, you know, I bought mine online. In fact, I, I found mine on a, on a daily special, uh, website. They sell one thing that day, and when they sell out, they sell out. I think I got mine for— I think it was about $150, but that was back whenever there wasn't a 3rd generation out.

Yeah.

And I think it was like more like $200 at the time, so I saved $50 on it. Um, so you never know. I mean, you know, eBay, there are other places I'm sure you can find them for, for less expensive. But, um, anyway, I'm a huge fan. Yeah, I'm a supporter.

Sounds like it, man. Yeah. I don't know that I'm a big fan of eBay though.

Okay, they used to be different than they are.

Yeah, yeah.

Used to, anybody could sell stuff and you still can, but—

I mean, it's, it's, it's like the internet equivalent of a flea market.

Yeah.

I don't like it.

And it's, and it's been taken over by people that are companies.

And I like flea markets.

Really?

But I don't like eBay.

Okay.

I'll sell stuff on there.

But I bet you don't sell stuff at flea markets. Not regularly.

I don't have like a booth. I'm just kind of like walking around wheeling and dealing.

Dude, you, you have a lot of stuff here you could sell at a flea market.

I'm looking around.

I see stuff.

Anyway, it's all mine. It's not going anywhere.

Yeah, there you go. Well, do you have any other questions? I mean, I, I'm the one that owns this thing, so I kind of— I'm afraid I missed something.

I learned everything I need to know about my Branson trip.

That's all I need to hear. He's got a pool table in the boys' bathroom, so go check it out. And he plays a mean fiddle.

Is is that somebody's name? Yes. Okay.

Shoji Chibuchi.

Is it made up? No.

What's his name?

I guess Mama and Daddy named him that.

I mean, I guess. I mean, I guess you can market anything you want to, but I'm pretty sure he didn't intentionally market himself as that.

I don't know. And like, I'm not gonna forget that.

Probably not.

But he's a fiddle player.

Yeah.

With a pool table in the boys' bathroom.

Yes.

Sounds shady.

It is not. You might spend some time in there though.

Not in the boys' bathroom. Yeah, you never know, man. There's stuff on those cues I don't need no hands on. That ain't right.

You know it's not. I do like Branson though.

That's a cool town.

Yeah, it's fun.

I've been there once.

You should go more.

Oh, it's just a long ways away.

Yeah, yeah. I used to live only 3 hours away. Yeah, people go there all the time from there.

We have really devolved in this conversation.

Yeah, nobody's listening anymore.

Not about sprinklers, they're not.

Nope.

Good, because we're done talking about them.

That's all we got. Thanks for listening! Go like us and leave us a review.

If it has anything to do with the ending of the show, we apologize.

That's right.

Actually, you know what? I'm not sorry at all. The end of the show is the end of the show. You're still listening. It's your fault.

Yeah, it's what we're doing here.

Good stuff was before.

That's right. But if you want to complain about it, info@homewonershow.com or kevin@homewonershow.com. Yeah, that works too. Either way, it'll get to me. Yeah, send us a message. Go on our website. Tell your friends about us. And we're glad you're here. We're here every Tuesday. Every Tuesday, every single Tuesday without fail.

Think about that.

So far. We've not failed yet.

Well, yeah, no, we haven't.

No, we haven't. Yeah, we're coming up on a year, man.

It's, it's creeping up. It's creeping up.

All right, and on that note, we'll see you next time.

See ya.