I’m looking for some guidance and I hope I’m in the right spot. I recently set up my Rachio generation 2 controller, but I can’t get it to work. I have a pump start relay and when I test the zones I can hear it kick on, as well as the water running to the valves. However, the zones are not working and it appears that I have a grounding issue. Unfortunately, my old irrigation controller was set up within 6 inches of the pump start relay and I put the new Rachio controller in the same spot. I have double checked all my connections and I am confident they are correct. I initially dismissed the note stating that there needs to be 15ft between the controller and the relay, but at this point that is the only thing I can see as the issue. Is it possible that the less than the 15ft distance could be causing the grounding issue and therefore not allowing the valves, and thus the zones, to turn on? Any help and/or advice would be greatly appreciated before I expend the time and money to move the controller.
The reason we recommend that distance is to reduce the amount of current supplied to your controller. If you are worried, I would make sure there is 15 of wire in between the two, but actual distance isn’t quite as important.
However, after looking into your device, it looks like your zone current values are actually very low (we would expect high if it was a relay issue.) I’m thinking something may be going on with your common wires… Can you ensure that they are all securely installed in the terminals? You can give them a tug to check! If they all seem fine, it would be very helpful to get a picture of your current wiring set up and your previous wiring set up, if you have those available to you.
Thank you for the reply. I have attached as requested? Additionally I have only one common wire (coming from Pump Start Relay) and we’ve assumed the common wire from the valves themselves is run into the pump start relay, but I’m not an electrician but that is just speculation (I had a friend who expanded my zones prior to this change check it out and that was his recollection)
Thank you for that information. Everything looks like it is set up correctly to me, I think best course of action would be for you to contact support so they can more effectively troubleshoot. You can email them at support@rachio.com, or you can schedule a call here. I would recommend scheduling a wiring help call, as you will be connected directly to one of our wiring experts, and they will get you sorted out very quickly
Probably not the issue but I’m curious what the red wire is going into the sc port, I can’t tell what toro clock this is, but I feel compelled to hook that red sc to the sp…but I’m not sure what you are trying to power with some 24v action.
what type of clock is this, I’m assuming an ec extra outdoor?
@mckynzee is a wiring genius! @bncntrde, sounds like moving the gray wire in zone 10 to your common terminal fixed the issue you were experiencing. Let us know if there’s anything else we can help you with moving forward.
Thanks for input. The issue was that the grey wire was not a zone, but rather the common wire (I was looking for a white wire) and once we moved it from zone 10 to a common input everything worked perfectly.
