Gen 2 says a zone is running but nothing is actually happening in the yard

Troubleshooting
1

Hello,

I have a gen 2 controller that i have had this problem with on and off since i purchased it last year. I have a schedule that runs daily at 3pm to one zone only for just 1 minute. At 3pm i will get notifications that Rachio has started that schedule and that this zone is currently running. However when i look out the window the zone is not on at all. Nothing is physically happening in my yard.

Like I’m sure almost everyone here does, I don’t work from home so I can’t check to see if my system is running as it should every day. I was home sick today and decided get up and check that it was working. It wasn’t. I have no faith that my system is actually running when its supposed to be.

Sometimes i can even manually start a zone and the app and controller tell me the zone should be running but again nothing is physically happening. In those cases i have to stop the manual entry and start it up again for it to work.

I just want to know for sure that when my system is supposed to be running that it actually is.

2

Is it just one specific zone, or all zones? I’ve had this happen to me. I don’t know what, if anything, you’ve done to troubleshoot it, but for me it was only one zone that was having this issue and it was because of a loose connection. When I physically turned on the valve the sprinklers came on, but when I manually ran it through the app, the app said it was on, but the solenoid in the valve was never activated. I figured the signal was not getting to the solenoid, so I started checking my connections. Sure enough that was the problem. It could also be a bad solenoid on your valve, meaning the signal is reaching the solenoid, but it’s just not opening. All the Rachio controller knows is that it sent the signal, it doesn’t know if the valve ever actually opened. Although now with the flow sensor, maybe it will, but I don’t have one of those. I hope this helps.

4 Likes