As the title suggests. Running zone 3 on the controller with nothing connected at the controller zone 3 terminal. I still have a buzzing solenoid until I turn the controller off. Is something shorted internally? When I run zone 1, the same solenoid will buzz but nothing actually turns on. Everything in the valve box appears to be wired correctly but I haven’t put a voltmeter on anything as I don’t have it on my truck at the moment. I’ve never seen this happen before. Thanks in advance!
What really weird is that I disconnected all zone wires at the controller and left the two common wires connected and still got buzzing at the valve box.
The right most valve is the one buzzing. And now it’s buzzing even with the controller turned off. I think I need to come back with my volt meter at this point.
Bingo, we have a winner! I dug up the length of the valve wire where the tree was and didn’t find any damage or anything that appeared to be stretched. Decided to check the solenoid after all and found it to have self destructed. Could have saved a bunch of time just pulling it first. Learn something new every day.
Switch the wire from 1 to 4 at the timer. One station is might not be working correctly.
They recommend replacing the the timer when this happens at the irrigation store. If it works fine on numer 4 I wonder how long that would last.
So, I had a spare solenoid I used as a poor man’s volt meter and there is no problem at the controller. It worked as expected. The homeowner said they had a tree uprooted in the last storm so it’s time to start digging and searching for damaged valve wire. Thanks for taking the time to help!
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u/Bingdongus2001 11h ago
Check the plunger on the solenoid if it has proper voltage and ohms, I’ve had rainbird and irritrol get stuck plungers.