My Controller Looks Like Its Working But Nothing is Coming on

Posted on 26th May 2013 in Controllers, General, solenoids, What's Going on There?

So you set your controller running and everything looks right on the digital panel, but there is no water?…

What’s going on?…

Well if you are running your retic off the mains then its most likely that there is a problem with your master solenoid. If it isn’t working then you won’t get any water to the different stations.

You can test if this is the issue by locating it, turning it on manually (usually you need to turn the coil a quarter turn anti-clockwise) and then running the system as usual. If everything works with the master valve open then you have found your problem.

If not then the problem may well be the controller itself.

holman-pro-469-controller1

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Rain Sensor Wet or Dry?…

Posted on 26th May 2013 in Controllers, What's Going on There?, wiring

holman-pro-469-controller1

If you have a Holman 4/6/9 controller and the display looks ok, but it doesn’t seem to be working then the first thing to check out is whether the rain sensor display says ‘rain sensor wet’ or ‘rain sensor dry’.

If it displays a ‘wet’ message then it means that there is no 24v power going to the controller and therefore no power to operate solenoids.

There are a few things that could cause this:

1) check your RCDs in your meter box as if one of these has tripped then you won’t have power to the box.

2) check your fuse. Most likely a fault will have blown the fuse.

3) It may be that the transformer that converts 240V to 24V has died. Not much you can do here but replace the unit.

But before you call someone out do the ‘wet/dry’ check first!

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Only One Station Comes on?

Posted on 5th April 2013 in What's Going on There?

 

x core

 

This week I went to a property where there were 5 retic stations wired up, but only station 3 would come on.

As with all these problems it is important to begin at the controller and follow wiring and piping from there. I put the controller on station 1 and tested for voltage. There were no volts coming from terminal 1, but one station was definitely on as I was getting wet.

I did the same for station 2 – no volts, but the same station was stuck on.

Station 3 had volts and water from the same sprinklers

Station 4 & 5 had the same watering pattern but no volts.

My conclusion was that something had gone awry in the control box and it wasn’t sending power to the other stations to enable them to open. For some reason it was only powering up station 3.

So I switched the boxes over, ran a test and all was good as new.

Had we begun by chasing solenoids we would have spent a lot of time and gained nothing as the problem was located in the controller itself.

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How Many Volts Does My Retic Need?

Posted on 5th March 2013 in General, Never Seen That One Before, What's Going on There?, wiring

Wire Roll (1)

I was working on a friend’s place recently with a strange fault that was proving difficult to track down.

The solenoid would come on and off intermitently. It would work 10 times in a row and then fail. There was power (27V) coming from the control box but at the solenoid the power varied between 22-26v according to my multimeter.

The power wire to the solenoid had been joined several times before it reached the solenoid and after eliminating any other possibilities (faulty coil/controller) I could only conclude that there was a problem with the wire run.

I ran a fresh wire to the solenoid and tested it around 20 times with no failure. It seemed that the wire was flawed somewhere between the controller and the solenoid. There were numerous connections and it wasn’t easy to find where the problem was so I simply ended up running a new wire.

So far so good…

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My Retic Won’t Come On

Posted on 18th January 2013 in What's Going on There?, wiring

Broken wires

 

This week I went back to a job I first looked at a couple of months back.

I stopped in on my way home to see why this particular system wasn’t working. It was late in the afternoon and more than I had time for so I declined to take the job on right then.

So when we got back yesterday I knew what we were doing.

I had already tested for power at the Master Valve and there was nothing there. However what was really odd was that there was intermittent power. I know because I brushed the fleshy side of my forearm across the wires and got a small boot. The power wouldn’t register on the multi-meter, although it did shoot up to 28v on one occasion before dying again and making me wonder if i was dreaming…

So the logical conclusion was that a common wire had been broken somewhere. Even when the master valve was turned on manually there was still no water going thru the system. We began at the controller and traced the wires thru a series of 4 different joins and eventually discovered a sliced cable about 30ml underground alongside the driveway. It looked like the edger had given it a beating.

The wire were joining occasionally hence the odd readings, but once it was all tidied up and rejoined the system was working perfectly again.

 

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Why Are My Sprinklers Just Dribbling?

Posted on 18th January 2013 in solenoids, What's Going on There?

wiring a solenoid perth reticulation

I went to look at a job this week where the sprinklers were working, but barely so.

Each station would dribble a small amount of water, but there was nowhere near enough to run the system. What was going on?…

I guess the logical cause had to be the master solenoid being stuck and thereby reducing pressure all round. However I have changed these over before only to see no change in the performance so I was cautious, even moreso because the master was buried 600ml deep, encased in bricks and covered in rocks and rubble. Not fun to get to!

The first check is always to make sure the water meter is fully on and operating properly – which it was. Then to begin digging…

When I finally uncovered the MV I discovered it was a jar top Richdel, and that was encouraging because often you can just screw the stop off, replace the guts and be done.

So I unscrewed the top section and removed it. The diaphragm was stuck to the lower section of the solenoid body and as I peeled it away the centre spindle came with it.

That hasn’t happened before and I didn’t like where this was going…

My hunch was that the diaphragm was no longer opening sufficiently to let water thru and with the spindle now removed it was never going to work properly.

I screwed it all back together with a new diaphragm to see what would happen. Nothing changed.

So I cut the main pipe just after the MV to see what kind of water flow was coming thru. It was lousy, obviously restricted, so the only option was to dig it all up and replace it. A little while later a new master valve proved to be the answer and one very happy homeowner had his sprinklers operating again.

Most retic is a logical process of elimination, as well as the occasional bit of trial and error!

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We’re Back!

Posted on 2nd January 2013 in General, What's Going on There?

We hope you had a fantastic Christmas and New year break.

We were glad to be able to take the hottest week of the year off, but we’re back on deck now and taking bookings so give Andrew a call on 0400044236.

 

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Fuse Messages on Irritrol Kiwdial Controllers

Posted on 2nd November 2012 in Controllers, Repairs, What's Going on There?

 

One of the most common service calls I do is to respond to the ‘fuse’ message on the Irritrol Kwikdial controllers.

The fuse message can be a frustrating one because it isn’t always clear if its the solenoid coil that is giving the problem, or if its the controller itself. And the the error can also be intermittent making it even harder to trace.

Obviously the place to begin is with the faulty solenoid coil as this is the cheaper of the two solutions. If replacing the coil (once you have determined which solenoid is sending the fault) removes the message then all good.

If not then chances are its the controller itself that is in the death throes.

Just last week I encountered one of these in Butler where the controller displayed ‘fuse’ intermittently. It failed often enough on station 1 for me to deduce that it was the coil that was at fault. I located it and replaced it and after 7 or 8 tests there were no problems.

However this week I had a call saying it was ‘doing it again’. If a brand new coil is giving the same result then we have either been extremely unlucky and hit a bad coil or the control box itself is faulty. I have replaced a few faulty control boxes showing this message with a good result.

So there you have it… there are two possibilities and while usually its the coil it might also be your controller.

 

 

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Only One Station Comes on… What Have I Done?

Posted on 27th September 2012 in Controllers, What's Going on There?, wiring

I went to a job today where the client told me that they were on a shared bore and that only one of their stations would come on. The pump would come on when the rear lawn was running but not on the other 3 stations… strange…

What was going on?

When I got there I also discovered that he had installed a new control box and wired it up himself. I assumed all this was done correctly, but after half an hour of testing various things it dawned on me that what he had done was wire the master/pump wire incorrectly.

He had mistakenly put the pump wire in station 4 and station 4 wire in the pump terminal thus meaning only one station would work. Once we reversed the wires everything worked as it should have.

The learning here is:

- always get the wires back in the right place

- if in doubt make sure you get the pump/MV and common correct. The rest is easy.

And if you ever re-wire your own control box and have just one station come on then consider that you have got the MV/pump wire in the wrong terminal.

Its easy to do!

 

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Intermittent Problems with Irritrol Kwikdial Controller

Posted on 26th September 2012 in Controllers, Never Seen That One Before, What's Going on There?

I have one customer whose home I have been to twice now to try and resolve a ‘fuse’ issue with his Irritrol controller.

When a kwikdial shows a ‘fuse’ message it generally means either box is playing up or one of the coils is playing up. When it does it intermittently then its hard to know which is the source of the problem – coil or controller.

Today I went back again and we decided to try option A which was to replace all coils on the master and 2 station valves. This was the cheapest option and it looks like it may have worked.

If this doesn’t work then the next option will be to replace the control box.

Let’s home he has a win here.

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