Cars are driving themselves and billionaires are headed around the moon. Yet many people still control their yard irrigation with seemingly prehistoric knobs and dials.
Denver startup Rachio is changing that.
Rachio, founded in 2013, is a technology company creating a smarter way to manage and control yard irrigation systems. The Rachio device hooks up to users' existing watering system and uses Wi-Fi and a mobile app to allow better control over water usage. This helps to conserve water and potentially save customers money.
The idea came to founder and CEO Chris Klein in 2012. With a drought in Denver, Klein said he tried to follow the outdoor watering restrictions, but even with a small yard he said he had trouble adhering to all of the guidelines.
Klein said he had already wanted to start a company and with this drought, and his discovery that 60 percent of residential water waste comes from irrigation systems (which only encompasses 20 percent of homes), he had his idea.
“I’ve been doing technology for quite some time and this is really the first time where I feel there is a perfect fit of applying technology solutions to a problem."
“The old controllers have knobs and dials which are very confusing to use, and as we started doing early customer interviews we found people hated them,” Klein said.
Instead of designing a new model and replacing the current irrigation systems, Rachio decided to cover them.
The Rachio device takes about 30 minutes to install, according to Klein. The majority of users can unhook their old controller and connect the wires to their Rachio device. They can then use Rachio’s app to set up different zones in their yard. Different zones could include where users have a garden, bushes or where grass sits under a tree.
Once users chose zones, they can then set up corresponding watering schedules. They can be as simple as requesting a watering on set time frame or requesting a zone get attention only when it absolutely needs it. The app then does the rest.
“We will effectively build schedules and then send those schedules down to the controller,” Co-Founder and CTO Franz Garsombke said. “Every day, every hour, we actively watch [the weather] and will do real time hydro adjustment, or we will skip it all together.”
Garsombke said the device can also use algorithms, weather and the standard characteristics of each type of zone, for example, to cool grass; predict how much moisture has evaporated; or discover how saturated the ground is and adjust the watering accordingly.
There are currently two models available: Generations 2 and 3. A flow meter can be added on to the Generation 3 model to track water flow, and also detect leaks and shut off water accordingly. The mobile app is free. The devices can be purchased through Rachio’s website and through retailers like Amazon.com, Lowe’s and The Home Depot.
Klein said the system can be an addition to a user’s already established smart home and can be run through devices such as Google Home and Alexa.
Rachio has raised over $20 million in funding to date and has customers all across the country and the world. Garsombke said Rachio wants to continue to enhance scheduling practices by incorporating machine learning technology in the future.
“I’ve been doing technology for quite some time and this is really the first time where I feel there is a perfect fit of applying technology solutions to a problem,” Garsombke said.
