One of the trees in our garden was struck by lightning and caused some slight damage to my Rachio. Can it be fixed?
On a serious note, it has been replaced and one zone out of the seven doesn’t work (yellow wire), do you all think it will be the wire or the solenoid?
Wow, that is crazy! Obviously the lightning traveled the wire to the Rachio, so there is a chance it blew through the wire at some point along its journey. If you have a multimeter, you can check voltage on that wire, otherwise, solenoids are pretty cheap and easy to wire in to rule that out.
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@msitergav - @Gene can probably tell you what component bit the dust so that you could do a component replacement. Rachio has been crazy good on warranty support in the past if the device is less than two years old.
Otherwise, I’d run a resistivity test between the yellow wire and the common wire - the results should be around 30 ohms through the solenoid and back. I disconnect the wires from the unit so I don’t have any back feed through the unit. If there is infinite resistivity then there is a break in the wire somewhere. Move to the solenoid and test the resistivity through the solenoid to see if the break is there or in the field wire.
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No, after seeing blown triakcs, I’m sure the chip driving those (as well as anything connected to it), would need to be replaced.
P.S. On a serious note, the lightning found a path to your controller. Seems it was the yellow wire since it stopped working. As such you’ll likely need to replace both the wire and the solenoid since the solenoid would have a similar damage internally as your old Rachio and the wire, at the very least, had its insolation burned off where the lightning has bridged it.
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You most definitely need a new controller and solenoid, but I would hire a professional just because of the extent of the damage. You might need a whole need valve, wire run, maybe even a common wire, the other solenoids might need to be replaced as a preventative measure since the current probably traveled through the common wire.
New controller and valve and everything is working fine. I will replace the other solenoids when/if they fail. Thanks!
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