I have an issue with my common wire. I have two valves in a valve box, Zone 3 and Zone 4. They are brand new Rainbird valves. Zone 4 works perfect. Zone 3 will not kick on. When I put a multimeter on the red wire coming in and the bare common wire I get a reading of 24.2. When I connect the wires from the solenoid it quits reading power. If I keep the multimeter on the red wire and ground the black prong of my multimeter I get 24 again, but not when I connect the wires. I used another solenoid off a Hunter valve just to test and same thing. What could be causing this?
Just to make sure I am understanding:
- You are talking about 24 VAC
- Measuring with the wires coming from the controller (and zone “on”) while disconnected from the valve, you are seeing 24 VAC
- As soon as you connect the controller (still on) with the valve, the voltage drops to 0
- You tried more than one solenoid and it was the same results
Is that all correct?
Can you measure the resistance (Ohms) across the solenoid?
Have you tried switching the zone wires between 3 & 4 to see if the new 4 works and the new 3 does not? This might help narrow it down depending on what you see
Yes, when I connect the wires from Zone 4 to Zone 3 it works fine. When I remove the solenoid wires from the hot and common it reads 24v. As soon as I connect the solenoid it drops to 0. I moved the wire from Zone 3 to Zone 10 just to see if that solved it, but it did not.
Sorry for more questions, I am not sure I understand this yet. When you move the controller zone 4 to valve zone 3, it works, but not when using controller zone 3 or controller zone 10?
That is correct. Both valves are brand new. Both work when hooked to Zone 4 wiring. The part that I am really struggling with is if you take all the valve wiring off and just measure the bare wires from the controller I get the exact same readings. But as soon as you add the “load” of the solenoid/valve the reading on Zone 3/10 disappears.
You might try reversing the hot and common wires at the control panel. I had the same problem and switching the wires fixed it.
Just to clarify, you are saying put the hot wire in the C slot and the common in the 3 slot?
No, I am saying switch the C common wire and MC master control wires.
I don’t have a master wire on my controller.
Can you post a picture of the valves and wires (show as much of the wires as you can).
Not sure if this is what you need. The middle valve is disconnected. The wire got cut years ago and the zone is now a deck, so unneeded.
Kinda hard to trace each wire in the pictures. I assume the wires (power and common) are not connected to the middle valve and the non-common wire is also disconnected from the controller.
Is there only 1 white wire (common wire I guess) coming from the controller connected to the valves?
Yes, there are three hot wires coming in and one white wire. There white wire has two jump wires for the other two valves. The jump wire and hot wire for valve 5 are capped and disconnected from the controller.
It is wired exactly like the diagram you included, except that they ran red hot wire from the colored sprinkler wire that is buried. I am going to dig down to the wires I think and see if I can reconnect Zone 5, or if there is a bad connection on Zone 3.
OK… when the wires were cut they were spliced underground. Hopefully when you uncover the wires that were cut you can make sure the splices are not touching the dirt. If a power wire that has received a problem at the splice and can connect to the dirt it has a ground and can certainly cause issues.
Well, I disconnected the controller and cut new splices and Zone 3 is now working. Zone 5 still a mystery, but it is 70 feet from the splice to the box and I am too old to find that problem. Thanks to everyone who tried to help.
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