Stan Robertson
New Member
Hello all. I am hoping you may be able to help me with an issue I'm having. I have a 6 zone system that draws water from the lake behind my house. When I start the system up, starting with any zone, the system starts, runs for about a minute (or less), then the pump runs dry so the sprinklers stop pumping water. However the pump does not go off so it continues to run until it's pulling water again (for maybe another minute) and automatically switches to the next zone (since the previous zone went off). I am wondering why it it running dry for that minute. I thought if the check valve were bad it would run dry from the start. I have a brass check valve out by the lake that I changed about 2 years ago (I replaced a PVC one with the brass).
The intake side of the pump does not appear to be leaking at all or drawing air. Is it possible that the check valve might have a small piece of something in it keeping it from closing completely? Should I check to see if there is a clog from where the water is actually drawing from. The end of the pipe has a big diffuser (I think it's called) with a big screen on the end and a number of small circular screens on the sides. I changed that about two years ago also.
I'll add that once the sprinklers are running everything works fine. The 15 minutes off between zones doesn't seem to affect anything. It just when it starts after a couple of days of being off that I experience the problem. Thanks in advance for your help.
The intake side of the pump does not appear to be leaking at all or drawing air. Is it possible that the check valve might have a small piece of something in it keeping it from closing completely? Should I check to see if there is a clog from where the water is actually drawing from. The end of the pipe has a big diffuser (I think it's called) with a big screen on the end and a number of small circular screens on the sides. I changed that about two years ago also.
I'll add that once the sprinklers are running everything works fine. The 15 minutes off between zones doesn't seem to affect anything. It just when it starts after a couple of days of being off that I experience the problem. Thanks in advance for your help.