Need Assistance Diagnosing Sprinkler System

Hello,

First off, I would like to thank anyone who takes the time out to assist me with trying to diagnose what could be wrong with my home sprinkler system. It is much appreciated.

I recently moved into my this house (built in 2005) and it has a total of six sprinkler zones, 2 of which have controller valves/solenoids on the left hand side of the house and the other 4 zones are controlled from valves/solenoids on the right hand side of the house. Recently, the four zones controlled from the right side of my house stopped working. I have done quite a bit of research on how to diagnose the issue and have gone through testing the control box and solenoids using a multimeter. Every appears to be working fine from an electronic perspective. I find it very unlikely that all four solenoids would have gone bad at the exact same time. Could it be that somehow the water coming into the valves is at fault? How would I diagnose this? I am very inexperienced with sprinkler systems and to be quite honest have very little experience at all at being a handy-man. Should I go out and buy a new solenoid just to see if that fixes one zone or would it be better to test it some other way?

Again, I really appreciate any help you can provide. Thanks!

Luke

 

Welcome to the forums.

Many zone valves have a manual way of turning them on. A knob that gets turned. Can you post a part number from the valve ?

If you activate a particular zone and then go to the valve and disconnect one wire..... you should hear the valve activate/close. If that isn't happening then maybe you don't have 24VAC at the solenoid.

 

Have you tried manually turning on the 4 problem zones? Do you get water when manually turned on? If not I would look for a shutoff valve or master valve somewhere.

Is the irrigation system fed by municipal (city) water or is there a separate well or pump for irrigation? If there is a irrigation well does the pump turn on when the problem zones call for water?

 

Thanks for the feedback. I cannot help but state again the fact that I am very inexperienced with this kind of stuff and might have to ask questions on terminology.

For example, I am assuming when PJmax asked me about zone valves, my only knowledge of this would be on the solenoid itself which I believe (if I read other information correctly) I could turn 1/4 counter clockwise to for it to run manually. I did this for two of the four zones and they did not run.

Pilot Dane - my sprinkler system is fed by the city and is reclaimed water. I tried to do the manual start up by turning the solenoid but as mentioned above not sure that was correct.

I will go out in the yard and take some pictures of what I have dug up thus far. I am probably going to have to dig up a significant amount more.

Lastly, I am not sure if it is simply coincidence or not but just a couple of weeks ago I had to replace a sprinkler head that my wife ran over. This sprinkler head was not from one of the problem zones (and at that time everything was working). I had to shut off the water at the street as I don't know where my shut off is near the house. I know you don't have to shut it off to fix it but there was a little bit of water still leaking from it after I took the sprinkler head off and needed to run to the store to get another one. I fixed the sprinkler head and turned the water back on. I cannot confirm or deny that the problem started happening immediately after this.

Thanks again!

 

That sounds like the water is not turned on. A master valve or shutoff like PD mentioned.

 

So, I did some digging and have attached some pictures. Unfortunately for me, when they build this house the landscaping company decided to put pushes directly over the access point on the right hand side of the house.

Here is what I was able to dig up thus far. I would be lying to say I don't quite understand what pipes are going where. I don't see any shut off valves close and there doesn't appear to be any before the solenoid valve.



Question. Is there any reason to believe that by me shutting off the reclaimed water street valve, that I somehow managed to flip some sort of shutoff valve for only the valves over on the right hand side of my house? What are my next steps for this? Do I need to trace that pipe that I see on the left hand side of the picture above all the way through the yard to see where it goes?

I have attached some other pictures below.

 

Are those pictures of the two working zones on the left side of the house? I only see access for two valves though there could be others buried under the bushes.

I'm guessing you have two lines going to each access. One is the supply carrying water to the valve and the other leads to the sprinklers.

Do your valves have a little lever on top you move to manually turn them on or do you turn the solenoid? If you turn the solenoid try turning it counter clockwise like you're unscrewing it. It may take more than 1/4 turn. After about a full turn does water flow or if you unscrew it completely does water spray out?

 

PD,

The picture shows one of the covers that holds two solenoid valves. The other one is to the left of the open one in the picture. Those are pictures of the non-working zones.

So I went ahead and attempted to take off one of the solenoids to prove whether it is a water problem or not. Sure enough a full turn and the sprinklers started to work so I now know it isn't a water problem.

I guess now I need to diagnose whether it is an electrical issue or a solenoid issue. I could go out and buy four new solenoids but that might be jumping the gun on the problem. I thought I had ruled out electrical since I used a multimeter to determine voltage was making it to the solenoids and I was able to measure ohms. Although maybe I didn't do it right?

 

In order to check continuity of a solenoid the wiring would need to be disconnected. You need to measure only the two wires coming out of the solenoid. Basically any reading on the ohmmeter will confirm coil continuity which means solenoid coil is good. It doesn't necessarily mean the solenoid will work. The internal part of the solenoid could be frozen/stuck.

To check for voltage.... the solenoid needs to be connected to the control box. Set your meter to the next scale over 24VAC.... usually 50v. If using digital... just set to AC volts and read directly. While you're checking... be sure to mark each valve with the zone number for future reference.

 

Usually irrigation wiring has one common or ground wire going to all the solenoids. Then there is a individual hot or positive wire for each solenoid. If all the solenoids stop working first check the common wire. Often the common wire from all the solenoids are wire nutted together to the common wire from the controller at one point. More rarely the common is daisy chained from one to the other but either way a bad connection to that common wire will prevent all the solenoids from working.

Wire nuts in irrigation systems can look different than what you have in your home. Because they are usually used underground they must be waterproof somehow. One common method is a regular wire nut shoved inside a plastic housing filled with grease. You'll need to pry open the plastic cap and pull out the wires & nut inside. Then get goopy fingers as you unscrew the nut and check the connection.



If you can't get continuity through the all important common wire dig around for unused conductors in the cable. Irrigation wiring is small and fragile so it's common to run a cable with more conductors than needed to make it easy to add another zone in the future and to serve as spare wires in case one becomes damaged.

 

Thanks for that excellent information. Oddly enough none of my wiring was twisted together with any type of water proofing. They are all just held in a standard wire nut. I suppose that could be an issue. I have been doing my tests with the multimeter on the hot wires. Is it possible for me to test the common wire to determine if that is indeed the cause? It isn't exactly clear to me how the wire leaves my garage from the controller so before I go down that rat hole I guess it would be nice to know if the common wire is the problem.

As I mentioned above, the wire nuts (assuming that is the correct term) are not water proofed at all. They are held within a tube that appears to help keep out the elements. When I removed the wires from the cap the exposed part of the wires looked a little rusty. I did my multimeter test on them so not sure that is an issue but I would imagine it would behoove me to water proof them.

 

First I would just re-do the ground or common wire connection at the valves. It's a common source of problems. Hopefully you have enough wire length to snip off the old ends and strip back to shiny copper. If not carefully scrape or clean the conductors until they are shiny copper. then re-connect them. While everything is dug up I would do the same with all the other connections as individual solenoid hot wires will eventually have a similar problem. If it works go buy a proper waterproof wire nut for irrigation systems and do it properly before burying everything.

If it was not a simple connection problem at the valves I take a picture of the wiring at the controller just in case I forget where things go. I disconnect all the zone wires from the controller and wire nut them together including the common wire. Then out at the valves with your meter you should be able to test all the wires for continuity. You should have continuity between any of the wires. If you don't have continuity in a pair you know that one of the two is broken. Switching one of the wires will identify which of the two are bad.

 

PD,

Excellent, thank you for the suggestions. Quick question though (and totally a newbie one) and that is what do you mean by testing continuity between wires?

 

Continuity is basically just a continuous path. In this case you want to make sure the wires are not broken. There should be a setting on your meter that will make the needle jump, beep or the display register when you touch the tip of your test probes together. There is nothing in your meter that can hurt you so feel free to play with settings until you find a mode that makes a beep or the needle jump when you touch the test probes together. Or, just tell us what meter you have and we can tell you where to turn the dial but it's probably a symbol with a little triangle with a line going through it.



Ordinarily you would put your test probes on either end of the wire you want to test. Since the ends of your wires are too far apart you cheat by tying the one end together so you can do all the testing from one end.

With the panel end of the solenoid wires tied together they should all have good contact with each other. Out in the yard put one test probe on one wire and the other test probe on another wire. If the needle on your meter jumps then you have a continuous electrical path on both wires, out and back, indicated that those two wires are not broken.

 

Thanks for the 101 on it. Now I understand. I will be giving this a test tomorrow so we will see what comes out of it.

 

So I took your recommendation PD with the exception that I only tested it with one zone. I went out to one of the non-working zones and removed the common and hot (that is what I will call it at least) wires and then connected the two together that went back to the controller. I then unplugged the common wire and the hot wire for that zone and took the reading from there.

I didn't get any results back from my test. I switched where I took the readings (connected just the two wires from the controller) and then took the reading from the zone and again no response. I tested my multimeter's connections together and did know what to expect.

So, would you agree that this almost certainly appears to be an issue with the common wire somewhere between the end of the first two zones (that work) and the last four solenoids (that don't work)? This would explain why all four stopped working at the same time. The dilemma now is how to resolve the issue. I could try to trace back the common wire all the way around the entire house to see where the disconnect is or I could just run a new wire.



I have provided a picture below of my controller. It has a port for a second common wire. Could I just run a new common wire from there all the way to the non-working zones on the right hand side of the house or would it be smarter to find the common wire from the working zones and just re-run it from there?



The second option might be better because of my set up. As you can see in the first picture all of the wires from the controller go through a PVC pipe outside. I also have an included a picture below of the bottom of it so I would have to take that apart to put another wire through it.



Lastly, I provided a picture of my multi-meter just to confirm the mode I had used. Thanks for your feedback!

 

Did you do your wiring test with the common to some of your other hot wires? Did any of them show continuity?

Before deciding about running a new common you should determine if it's only the common that's broken, a few broken wires or if it's all the wires in that cable. The reason I like tying all the wires together at the panel and using the meter out in the yard is that you can test all the wires quickly. Any wire should show continuity to any wire so you can quickly go through and check all the wires. If none of them have continuity then the whole cable may have been cut.

Now for the odd part... You said you have two zones on one side of the house and four on the other. I see your six zone hot wires but only one common. Do you know how the common is sent to the valves on different sides of the house? Is there somewhere in the middle where the one wire is split to two? Or, does the common run to one set of valves and then a separate wire is run to the valves on the other side of the house. Hopefully it's just a bad connection at one of those points.

 

PD - Hmm, you bring up excellent points and I will test more wires than just the common one to see what I can find. I tend to doubt the issue is with any of the hot wires as I was able to do the ohm and voltage tests just fine (not technical terms I know).

As for knowing how the single common wire works, I have no clue where it is separated at. I was thinking if all I had to do was replace the common wire I would just connect it to the common one leaving the two zones on the left hand side of the house and then rerun it to the other side of the house. Otherwise I would have to dig up the entire common wire to figure out where it was split.

 

Not to confuse the issue.

At the controller you have 7 wires. 6 zones and 1 common. That cable most likely runs to the valves that are currently working and then there would probably be a second 7 wire cable between the two sets of valves. You need to look at both valve sets and determine what is feeding them.

What colors do you see connected to the two valves and what color wires do you see connected to the four valves.

 

Yes, I agree. That Will be my next steps once I purchase the new wire.

 

PD - did additional tests and confirmed it is only the common wire that is having issues. Headed to store tomorrow to buy wire to rerun it.

 

If the cable goes from the control box to the working side valves first..... then you may not need to change the cable. You don't have to use a particular color for common. If the cable between the two valve areas has the problem.... then use a different wire for common.

 

The setting you should be using for your ohms test is 200 ohms, which is one setting to the left of the one you were using in the picture. Most likely a common wire issue. You should disconnect the common wire and test between that and each station while they are still connected to the circuit board. Most likely you will get a number that increases from low to high and jump around a bit--this will indicate your bad common wire.

 

Will do. Thanks for all the great advice! I am learning a lot.

 

I just wanted to give everyone an update as to my progress. I purchased what I needed and started by digging up the wires which were coming in to the four zones that were not working. I did some tests between there and the common wire from the 2 zones on the left hand side of the house that work. Again, no luck with narrowing down the issue.

Next, I went to the working zones and dug up some of the wire trying to see if I could get lucky by finding some sort of disconnect between the common wire. No luck. So, I went ahead and ran the new wire from the working zones to the non-working zones, reconnected everything and viola it works perfect. I did notice that it does appear that these systems really were install fairly half-assed. No water-proof wire connectors and just a gigantic wire mess.

The only thing left to do is go bury the wire back into the ground which will be the easy part.

I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to helping me resolve this. I learned a lot about my sprinkler system and I feel more comfortable with diagnosing wires as well. I certainly appreciate it and hope to provide quality feedback as well since I find this forum to be a very useful place. Thank you!

 

Digging is the hard part of a job so I always bury an extra cable. It can be used as a spare or for future expansion.

 

PD - I should have read your comment yesterday as I just finished burying the wire today. I went the same route as the previous wire so pulled that one out of the ground as I installed the new one. Came to find out that the previous wire had been pieced together in three difference places with no water proof connectors. I found that connection closest to the non-working side of the house was missing a cap on the two common wires. How irritating to see how much time and money I just spent to fix such a stupid issue. At least now the wire I put down is one single wire so it should be easier to diagnose future issues. Again, thanks for all your help.