Hi all,
In the process of converting an old Rainbird rc 7bi to a Rachio 2nd gen and need a little help.
I believe I wired everything correctly and have the wifi set-up but when testing the zones none of them worked.
Please help! Photos attached.
Rachio controller is primarily designed for a solid wire (where the conductive part is a single thicker conductor). The interconnect wires you’ve reused from the old controller are stranded (whereas the conductive part is made out of multiple thin wires). Likely that your common and/or master valve lines are not making a good connection. For best results you will likely wish to stop using the old interconnect wires.
Another possibility is that you are using a wrong common connection. Looking at a manual, the common seems to be a White / Red wire:
I would try hooking up the red/white to commons as well:
If the above step does not work, you have two options that should work:
- Move the rachio lower down, so that the field wires (thick red and a white wires) can reach and be connected directly to Rachio.
- Buy a foot or two of the irrigation wire from a home improvement store, like this one (link) from lowes. And use that instead of the old stranded wires.
Cheers,
Gene
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I would say move the Rachio to the left so that the gap between the boards acts as a conduit into the new controller and like Gene said just hook the field wires(white and reds) to the Rachio.
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Thank you so much for the help, you were right the old wires couldn’t get a good connection so I bought the new ones you suggested and it worked!
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