Rachio Smart Hose Timer (1 Valve + 1 WiFi Hub) – App-Controlled Outdoor Faucet Timer, Quick Install & Scheduling, Expandable System

5/5 stars I'm so glad I invested in the Rachio hose timer It's been a game-changer for my gardening routine. With the Rachio app, I can easily manage and monitor my hose watering from my phone, which is super convenient. I no longer have to worry about remembering to water my plants or dealing with tedious hand watering. The automation feature is amazing - I can set up a schedule for my plants to receive the right amount of water, and the Rachio timer will take care of the rest. It's also great to know that the timer is smart enough to skip a scheduled watering if rain is expected or has already occurred. I've been using the Rachio timer with my soaker hose, and it's been working perfectly. The soaker hose is great for watering my ground cover plants evenly, and the Rachio timer ensures that the water is delivered at the right time. I've noticed a significant improvement in the health and growth of my plants since using the Rachio timer. One of the features I appreciate most is the Quick Run option. It's so easy to start a manual watering session directly from the app or the timer itself. This is perfect for when I need to give my plants a little extra water. Overall, I'm extremely satisfied with the Rachio hose timer. It's been a huge time-saver and has helped me to take better care of my plants. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a smart and convenient way to water their garden. Pros: * Easy to use and manage from the app * Automates watering schedule for convenience * Smart rain skip feature ensures plants don't get waterlogged * Compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant * Quick Run option for manual watering sessions * Works well with my soaker hose for even watering Cons: None

UPDATE May 2025: when I tried to get up and going this season the WiFi hub would not connect to the hose timer. I tried everything but it just didn't connect. I ended up calling Rachio customer service and they were amazingly helpful. They tried lots of fixes including some not in the manual, and then eventually sent me a replacement (under warranty). Now everything is up and running again. I really appreciate the Rachio hose timer and now I REALLY appreciate their amazing customer service. I am one satisfied customer. I am brand new to hose timers. But we have a Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller for our front yard, and wanted to automate/simplify watering our three raised garden beds. Since we already had the Rachio app loaded on our android phone, it was very simple to set up the hose timer, and name it, and connect the WiFi Hub. And after a bit of trial and error, we figured out how to get Alexa to turn it on and off. We found that to open the hose timer valve, we say "Alexa, open [valve name]." And to turn it off, we can say "Alexa, close [valve name]." Of course, we can also set up schedules in the app, or turn the timer on/off manually in the app, or even start/stop it by pressing the button on the timer itself. But using Alexa works just fine for us. We did have to get a new hose bib, though. Our old one was leaking when we set up the hose timer! But that isn’t due to the timer, just a bad hose bib. All in all, I would definitely recommend this to family and friends.

I have had 4 of these hose timers all cause batteries to leak, leading to internal corrosion so bad the unit was destroyed. All caused the batteries to leak in a year or less. To me, this indicates a serious design flaw in the Rachio Smart Hose Timer. Do not buy this! What makes me think there's a serious design flaw? I spent 20 years as an engineer working on battery-powered products, using primary and rechargeable batteries. I also worked on IP-rated battery powered products intended for outdoor use, and spent a lot of time testing designs, testing batteries, and battery failure modes, and working on fixes. In that time, I learned that battery quality makes a difference, especially when it comes to not leaking. After years of witnessing many horrors, I only use high-quality batteries, and know their proper uses and limitations. I haven't had batteries leak in anything for decades. That is, until I started using Rachio Smart Hose Timers. I also used electronic hose timers by Orbit for about 10 years, both units without connectivity and Orbit B-Hyve units. I never had batteries leak in any of those hose timers. I moved to the Rachio because the Orbit B-Hyve's connectivity was pretty unreliable, despite my best efforts (I also spent years working on wireless products). The Rachio was great, until they inevitably made the battery leak. I'm not sure if the flaw is electrical or mechanical, and I don't plan on doing Rachio's engineering work for them. I wouldn't trust another Rachio product, though, even if it wasn't battery-powered.

I had a hose timer that watered my live wall twice a day, morning and evening. It was a dumb digital timer that went off, rain or shine. This was obviously wasteful during rainy days and I didn't always want to run out in the rain to disable the timer. So I was so pleasantly surprised to see the Rachio smart hose timer can check live weather data and skip a watering schedule if it's raining. Perfect! The timer itself is an attractive, compact unit that installs as easily as screwing on a hose to any hose bibb. Plug in the smart controller into an outlet relatively close to the timer and download the app. The app itself is incredibly intuitive and setting up a schedule took no time at all. The app requires the location of your installed timer in order to get weather data. Everything works beautifully and on days where rain was forecasted the app will indicate that the schedule will be skipped. When rain started minutes before a scheduled watering, the app knew to skip it too. It's one of the rare times I'd consider a "smart" product that is actually smart and not just connected to an app.

works great.. easy setup.

I have a garden that is nearly 100 feet from my nearest spigot. I also have a yard full of flowers that I water daily. I would make, literally, 10-20 laps to and from my spigot day to turn off/on my hose. Not that I'm lazy, but it's just a lot of unnecessary overhead. So, i downloaded the app that comes with the Rachio Smart Hose Timer. I now just grab my phone wherever I am in the yard, pop up the very intuitive app and turn my hose off and on from where I am not where I need to walk 100 feet to. Obviously the timer functions are great for a garden. My comes on at 5am every day. The integrated weather feature that cancels the watering schedule for the day if there has been a recent rain is like gardening magic. Prob other things I could mention but just these couple have made the purchase (which I thought was a little steep) well worth it imo. I would have actually paid more for it knowing what it does now. EDIT AFTER 1 SEASON - brought this unit inside in October. It was inactive all winter. Today it warmed up enough to hook it up to an external spicket. It leaked badly when turned off with the water spicket open. Worse when activated it only pushed a slight stream through the hose. I've read from other poor rating reviews that the design is flawed. Water will pool into the internal battery compartment thus corroding internal parts. I'm leaving at 2 stars because it did work very well for one season. Unfortunately after paying nearly $100 for this item I expected at least a few seasons of reliability. EDIT 3/2026 - I contacted the company because this seems to be a not uncommon issue with these devices. I got through a chat line on the Rachio website in just a couple minutes I was chatting with support. Because, I assume, this is such a common warranty issue they had no problems replacing my unit. I had to upload a couple pictures. One of the rusted battery compartment. And, of course, my Amazon receipt. With 3 days I had a brand new unit. From looking at this product now it's went up about 20%. Could be inflation, but my guess is they redesigned the battery compartment and most likely fixed the only problem i had with the product. I would give it 5 stars because as I said earlier it's a wonderful niche product. But, I did have the one huge problem and Rachio did a stellar job of fixing it.

I've used a Rachio 3 for almost five years to control my 8-zone sprinkler system and considered using their hose controller as well. I had an older digital programmable timer that worked fine and was ready to go each season, so I wondered why change it. Until this year, when I re-installed the simple digital timer—probably for the 7th or 8th season—that I attached to misters for my hanging baskets. Unfortunately, it failed, and I didn't realize it until I was out about $200 on hanging flower baskets, all dried up and not coming back. I decided it was time to replace it and ordered one to try, then another for a different area. If you're already a Rachio user, it's straightforward to add to their app, and it shows up with your other products. It uses a hub, which is easy to configure, and I find I prefer it over just Wi-Fi devices. Hubs tend to be more stable, as I’ve experienced with my Lutron Caseta and Phillips Hue setups—they always work without connectivity issues. Programming is simple and done through your phone, accounting for rain and other reasons you might want to skip watering. The device feels solid and well-built, with a single button to activate flow for 10 minutes—or whatever you set it for. I've had no issues with these two units working daily for about a month now, and the reporting feature is nice for letting me know when watering occurs. I'm very happy with them and hope they serve me well for many years.

With a late spring and early summer having almost no rain, I had to find an answer. First, I started lining the garden with drip hoses. After that, I wanted automation. With this device, I was able to automate my morning and night watering of the vegetable garden with minimal intervention. It's perfectly effective and super smart once set up! It automatically skips watering if it has rained that day or night before-- your choice! The app is simple and beautiful. The device is minimalist and easy to use. Once set up it's set it and forget it. You can run it from the app-- you can run it from the device-- and the app tells you when watering did and didn't happen, and if a watering was intentionally skipped. I love it. I bought a second one to manage one-off water sprinkler usage easily. Now for the room for improvement: The app could use a little improvement only during the initial install and setup phase. There were some things that didn't quite explain everything thoroughly between the steps of unboxing things, then having it in the field and with water pressure turned on for some testing before the app considers it fully ready and installed. I also had some logical flow instructions missing, for example, it works like Google Nest: First you add a home, then you add a wifi bridge, then you add a valve. The app doesn't necessarily tell you this 1,2,3 so I had to go back a little bit and start a different way. That being said, initial firmware updates went well and easily, and I haven't had a bad experience anywhere past that initial setup phase. There is only one other "gotcha" that surprised me a bit that you should be aware of: The Wifi unit has to be INDOORS (not a surprise) but it has to be within 200' of the valve (surprise) so if you need to BOTH have it indoors PLUS within 200' of the valve, it could pose some yard logistics issues for you depending on where you have indoors space plus wifi coverage. Having wifi coverage at the location of the valve is not the "only" requirement. Even with those limitations and app setup confusion, this is still a 5 star product due to it's price point, functionality, design and innovative solution. I love it completely.

Muy buen producto, fácil de instalar y programar.

Use this all the time. The schedules are easy to setup, and the rain skip works very well if you setup your location correctly. The hup is unobtrusive and has a good range. The app is great as I can easily control it from my phone. I have an older house with only 1 water tap outside in the back. So when I am watering in the front, I can control the water easily.

The build quality of the device is really good. The app is also really slick and easy to use. If you are buying this for use outside of North America beware though. The thread on the device does not quite match Australian tap sizes. You will need some Teflon tape and an extra gasket to reduce the depth of the fitting, otherwise it will not make a good seel.

Super easy to set up and integrates with Home Assistant. So far, very happy!

When we moved into our new house, it came with a pre-installed Rachio system complete with zones, but missing a zone for the lawn. Given water restrictions for the summer, adding this hose controller allowed me to keep the system running all under one app so that schedules could be easily managed. The battery life is great, the Wi-Fi range is excellent, and setup was very straightforward. It also works with the "rain-skip" function, so I don't need to manually skip a watering in advance of rainy days. Highly recommended!