The Rachio Intelligent Irrigation Controller Has Saved Users 29 Billion Gallons Of Water To Date

---

Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

---

Water is thought by many to be the next imminent crisis for the world and indeed, many parts of the world are struggling to maintain fresh water supplies for their populations. The team that built the intelligent residential irrigation management system Rachio believes they have built a solution that nips this in the bud for many developed nations where irrigation is one of the biggest opportunities to prevent water waste.

There are around 20 million homes in the United States with water controllers on them and they constitute 60% of water waste. That can be anything from leaky faucets to running toilets, but a large chunk of the pie is related to irrigation. With most irrigation systems set to run at night, how long does it take the average homeowner to realize that 4 months back, she ran over a sprinkler when mowing the yard? I know I’ve had a few broken sprinklers that sprayed like a geyser into the air for months on end during our 3am watering schedule before I realized something was amiss…

Back in 2015, we covered a startup company called Rachio and the first version of its water-saving product. Several years and a few new hardware versions later, we sat down with Rachio co-founder and CEO Chris Klein this month to learn a bit about the solution and how it came into being.

Chris shared that the solution was developed in 2013 after 3 years of drought in Denver, Colorado, in the Central United States. To date, the system has saved 29 billion gallons of water at the homes using the system and that’s not even including the seasonal adjustments the system is able to make automatically. Now that I have your attention, let’s dive in and look at how it works.

The Rachio Solution

Rachio is an intelligent residential irrigation controller replacement that nearly instantly converts dumb residential irrigation systems to dynamic, internet connected water management systems. Think about it like Nest, but for irrigation.

What once was only capable of turning sprinklers on and off in order for a predetermined amount of time on a schedule is transformed into a weather aware system that understands the plants in each irrigation zone and their needs.

At its heart, the Rachio system is a bolt-on head unit that replaces the old irrigation management system, and connects to the home’s wifi network which allows it to talk to the cloud and the homeowner via its smartphone app.

As you would expect, the majority of Rachio users just ‘set it and forget it’ after the initial setup, but a full 20-25% of the user base actually interact with the Rachio app daily during the peak season. That caught me off guard and felt really high but just goes to show you how valuable the solution is.

Most people login to the app to tweak their watering schedules or to customize the notifications sent by the system, which can be tailored to the needs of the user. As with any intelligent, connected system these days, Rachio integrates with Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home for voice control. Maybe the designers were planning ahead for a well timed ‘Alexa, turn on the sprinklers’ though I personally can’t imagine that going too well most of the time. Maybe that’s just because I have little kids in the house that spend hours asking Alexa to bark like a dog.

Evapotranspiration

After installing the head unit, a short configuration via the smartphone app tells the system about the plants being watered in each zone of the house. Sun exposure and shading are also taken into account along with the geolocation of the home. It’s actually much simpler than it sounds.

The system takes the various inputs from the user and applies the concept of evapotranspiration (go ahead and say that 5 times fast. I’ll wait.) to fine tune the watering requirements of each area of the yard based on the needs of the plant and the weather. Plant data is then used by Rachio’s Smart Cycle to adjust the watering schedule and duration dynamically to encourage healthy plant growth. Giving plants exactly what they need, when they need it, grows deep roots, and healthy plants ultimately use less water.

In short, evapotranspiration is the water lost from the ground and plants to the atmosphere…but I’m no expert on the matter. Suffice it to say that taking the effects of evapotranspiration into account help Rachio to more accurately account for the water your plants actually need and that’s cool. For more info about evapotranspiration, head over to the US Geological Services page dedicated to explaining it if you’re feeling a need to geek out on the complex relationship between water and plants.

Current State

Rachio has been out in the hands of users for a few years now and as mentioned above, has been wildly successful at saving water, with over 29 billion gallons saved to date. Looking at the review sites that we all go to for product recommendations, it’s clear that the users love the system, with an average rating of 4.6 stars on Amazon for its product with the highest distribution. With more than 100,000 customers using the system, that’s saying something. Rachio’s customers are currently spread across the drought-prone areas of the United States with a few systems sprinkled around internationally in a total of 80 countries.

The team at Rachio is also working with local water districts and utilities to show them what Rachio delivers in terms of savings to get plugged into all the relevant water saving rebates. In drought-prone areas, it’s common for water districts or utilities to provide rebates. In California, which is almost perpetually in drought, there are rebates throughout the state for water saving devices like Rachio. Some utilities are even buying the units and doling them out to customers to make adopting the intelligent irrigation controller that much easier.

It is currently in its third generation on the hardware side, which has brought some new capabilities to the table like flow management. “I’m really excited with the generation 3 product that we’re measuring flow,” Chris related.

Level 2 Water Control

To take the solution to the next level, the team has added a bolt on water flow meter that gives users a deeper understanding of how and when water is being used. These are a bit more work to install and require cutting PVC to plumb them in but still fall well within the capability of anyone who has put in a sprinkler line or patched up some broken PVC after putting in a new tree or plant.

The flow meters are much lower cost than most flow meters because they aren’t hardwired. The flip side of that is that they are battery powered with a cell that lasts about 2 years. Adding a flow meter (or four) gives homeowners an extra layer of protection against costly and wasteful water leaks that might otherwise go unnoticed.

What’s Next For Rachio?

As of today, Rachio’s system is ready for primetime customers looking to save water. Chris noted that, “These are products that are real, that homeowners can get today and start saving water.” Additionally, water districts looking to drive savings with their customers can not only use Rachio’s system to do this, but they can then aggregate customer data to determine water savings. The ability to not just invest in water reduction efforts but to prove exactly what effect they had is powerful and unprecedented.

Moving forward, the team at Rachio would love to extend the reach of its solution into the walls of the house, adding flow meters in critical locations inside the home to help owners save water in more areas.

To learn more about Rachio, head over to the official website or go read the pages of rave reviews on Amazon or your favorite online retailer.