Valve, station question

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DFWNTX

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Hello everyone, I recently purchased a home with a sprinkler system, builder installed in 2006. I had a couple of minor repairs to do with bad heads and the like. My question is, I have 9 zones wired in the Rainbird ESP Modular controller, but only 8 operate, being there are 9 wired, should I actually have 9? The only area not getting watered is on the other side of my driveway, the entire rest of my yard is covered by the 8 operating zones. I have walked the yard and can only locate 3 valve boxes, two in the front yard, one in back, each have 2 valves in them so there are 6 so far. Zones 1-4 cover the front yard and 5-8 cover the backyard. Now I should have a valve per zone correct? If so, I need to locate either one or two more valve boxes. None of the valve boxes I have opened so far have a pink wire in them, which is zone 9's color at the controller. Thank you!
 
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I had a similar problem with a zone that wasn't working, and I had no idea where any of the valve boxes were located. I rented a Greenlee valve locator and it was money well spent. I was able to locate the bad valve and had it dug up and fully exposed in an hour. It was evening, and since it was hot and mosquito time I got up early the next day and located the other five valves in less than an hour. None of the rental stores had valve locators, but the irrigation supply houses did. The standard rental price where I rented it was $75/day, but they dropped it to $45 because I got it back so fast.

If you go this route I'd suggest finding out what model of valve locator they have and then download and read the instructions before you rent it. There is no reason to pay rent while you are learning the device. I also went the route of connecting to both the zone lead and the common lead instead of running the common wire out to an earth ground. If you are looking for nicked wires the earth ground is better, but to locate valves the direct connections are fine. When you get a zone connected use the location of the valve boxes you found to get an idea where they put the valve boxes you need to locate. Since you know where some of them are you can also test the valve locator on the known boxes to learn how it behaves. You have an advantage because they put more than one valve in a box, and you already know where six of the zone valves are located. Homing in on the signal is pretty easy to do. When you get extremely strong signals, tap the ground in several places to see if you hit a plastic valve box cover. If you don't, flag the spot and turn the sensitivity down. Then recheck the flagged spots and see which one kicks out the strongest signal. That's probably your valve box.
 

DFWNTX

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Thank you for the reply! I will definitely check into this device. There are some places on this side of the Metroplex I can call on. I don't see any reason to not think I don't have a 9th station since it is wired to the controller, if not, I see no reason to connect the wire. I have also noticed pieces of lid colored plastic scattered on the west side of the yard when cutting the grass. The lids I have found aren't new, so it isn't them. The hail storm may have destroyed the ones I am looking for and now they are filled in and covered given all the contractors that worked on repairing the house. The gutter folks were nice enough to place downspouts over 3 of my pop ups. They clear, barely.
 

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After trying everything but renting the line tone generator, I actually got lucky using a 4 foot copper grounding rod, probing the backyard where common sense would say the valve box should be, near the stations they control. I found two valve boxes side by side on the east side of my backyard, these would be for stations 7, 8 and 9. 9 is dead, hopefully it is just a solenoid. It took me less than a half an hour to locate them, I think I got lucky.
 
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If it's the solenoid you should be able to manually turn on the valve. If all valves pretty much operate the same, look for a small bleeder valve on the top of the valve and open it about 1/4 turn. That should turn on the sprinklers in the zone by bypassing the solenoid. That didn't work for me because it was a diaphragm that was causing the problem, but I could at least hear water passing through. If the bypass is different for your valve brand, clean up the valve until you can read the brand and model number, then look it up on the Internet.
 

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I did the manual test last evening on the 3 valves and they all open, the number 9 station is as I thought, the narrow driveway side, plus along the fence at the end of the driveway by the house, about 9 heads total. I just need to test it now and find out why it doesn't come on with the command from the controller. I'll have time to do that this weekend.
 
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I'd say you have it narrowed down to one of two problems, one being an easy fix and one being a potential nightmare: Solenoid or a break/leak in the wire. Hope it's not the latter. From what I read, even with the Greenlee or other tone generator there seems to be a learning curve and a lot of finesse involved in locating the actual break in the wire, and even harder for a leak, i.e. cracked insulation in one or more places.
 

DFWNTX

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If I don't get any voltage at the valve, I will back trace it to prior valve boxes inline and test it at each point. All the station wires are in the same sleeve, so it could be possible of a bad connection in a valve box. Since it is only one dead valve I'm leaning towards a bad solenoid.
 
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When you say "sleeve", are you saying that the wires are run through electrical conduit, and not just buried in the ground? If so, even if it is a wire problem it might not be such a nightmare. If it comes to it, you might be able to connect new wire to the old and pull it through to the low voltage wire.
 

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There are 10 or 12 different colored wires in insulation, probably 1/4" in diameter and it goes from the controller to the valve boxes in numerical and color code order, so the pink wire is in every box until it reaches its valve, #9. The wiring stops at the last two valve boxes I found a couple days ago. So the wire almost runs around the entire yard and house. No conduit, but probably buried near the pipe runs when possible. So if one wire was cut in a spot before station 9 and after stations 5 and 6 lets say, chances are all would be cut to 7 and 8 as well and they wouldn't work either.
 

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I'm back again! Actually I have been busy with other things, but since being on here last I found the station 7, 8 and 9 valve boxes! I used a copper grounding rod I had and figured the boxes had to be near the stations they control and after about 20 minutes of dropping the rod into the grass, I hit pay dirt. The boxes were side by side on the east side of my house near the stations. I found valve #9, the one I thought existed, but wasn't sure, well it does and it controls the sprinklers by my driveway I figured would have been there. I manually turned on the #9 valve and the heads popped up and watered, just no action when using the controller. I went ahead and replaced the solenoid, $8 part. I have voltage at the controller output to the valve, but zero voltage at the valve itself. Is it typical that one common wire run runs to all the valves and just peels off a color for each valve until reaching the end? My wiring run, I am thinking, starts at the garage and runs all the way around my house to the left and ends in the backyard where I found the the last 2 boxes. If so, my thought is to start at the first valve box and voltage check the pink wire all the way down the line until I lose voltage or work back to front, either way I am looking for a voltage loss. Since I only have on dead station in the system, it may loose in one of the boxes. Thanks!
 
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I'm back again! Actually I have been busy with other things, but since being on here last I found the station 7, 8 and 9 valve boxes! I used a copper grounding rod I had and figured the boxes had to be near the stations they control and after about 20 minutes of dropping the rod into the grass, I hit pay dirt. The boxes were side by side on the east side of my house near the stations. I found valve #9, the one I thought existed, but wasn't sure, well it does and it controls the sprinklers by my driveway I figured would have been there. I manually turned on the #9 valve and the heads popped up and watered, just no action when using the controller.

First thing I would check is continuity on the hot wire between that zone and the control box. If you have continuity on the hot wire, check it on the ground wire. If the valve is working manually, but not via the controller it's an electrical problem. If you have continuity for both wires, the problem is probably going to be in the controller for that zone. If that's the case, then you might move the wiring for the zone in question to a new, unused zone, assuming you have one available. But my bet is on a wiring problem at this point.
 
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