sprinkler zone won’t turn on?
Solution: Find the Valve Box: First thing to do is to locate the valve box. The valve box is generally a green box located somewhere on the lawn. Inside the valve box there is generally 1-4 valves as pictured below. If you can’t find the valve box call us:
Locate Correct Valve & Turn on Manually: The best way to locate which valving on, is to e isn’t turn on each valve manually. This is done by twisting the solenoid ¼ turn counter-clockwise. The solenoid is the cylinder looking part of the valve with the two wires sticking out of it as seen below (for most valves).
This should turn open the valve, and turn on the sprinklers. If the solenoid will not twist, the bleeder screw can also be loosened to turn on the valve. The bleeder screw is the smaller screw that is also located on the valve. When the bleeder screw is loosened it will leak a little bit.
Confirm Wiring is Correct: Once the valve is located, make sure the wires are connected correctly. As shown in the picture, each valve has two wires coming off of it. One wire from each valve needs to be connected to the common wire. This wire is usually colored white or black. Then, the remaining wire from each valve needs to go to its own differently colored wire. For instance, if there was a valve box with 3 valves: valve 1, 2 and 3. Then I would connect 1 wire from each valve to my white wire. Then valve 1’s extra wire would go to a red wire, valve 2’s extra would go to a blue wire, and valve 3’s extra would go to a green wire. It doesn’t matter which wire from a valve is connected to the common vs. its own strand.
Check the Solenoid: If the zone is still not turning on after the wiring is confirmed to be correct, check to see if the solenoid of the malfunctioning valve is working or broken. 3 nine-volt batteries connected in series are needed in order to check the solenoid. Take both wires of the solenoid and touch them to the battery, one to the “+“ end and one to the “–“ end as pictured.
Once the solenoid is touching both ends of the battery, the solenoid should start clicking. If the solenoid doesn’t click, it needs to be replaced. To replace the solenoid simply twist the bad one off and screw in a replacement. When removing a solenoid from a valve the secondary water needs to be shut off.
Redo Wire Connections: If the solenoid is working and the valve still will not turn on when turned on from the timer, redo the wire connections that are involved with the malfunctioning valve. Simply cut off the old wire nuts, strip the two wires that were cut, and reconnect the wires with waterproof wire nuts. Also try and trace the wire as much as possible. Look for any cuts or big scrapes along the wire where one of the strands could have been cut off. Also look at the timer and make sure that the wires are all connected correctly to the timer. Each timer should come with it’s own user guide to help with wiring.
vi. Extra Trouble Shooting: If you have done all steps, and the zone still isn’t turning on, then you may want to replace the entire guts (diaphragm, spring, etc..) of the valve. To do this please refer part b where I explain how to repair a valve that is not turning off.
Another thing that could happen is that the flow control could be all the way off. The flow control is another screw on the valve. Not all valves have flow controls. The flow control screw needs to be loosened all the way for full pressure. If the flow control is tightened, then the pressure will be so bad that the sprinklers won’t even come up.
If the zone isn’t turning on all the way and it isn’t a flow control issue, look for areas in your lawn where there might be a broken line. Broken sprinkler lines will take all the pressure. This causes the other sprinklers to have low pressure or even not come up at all.
If are still having trouble with your sprinkler valve not turning on call click here to contact us.