Ever since I have valve monitoring, about three years now, one of the zones is consitently reporting hight current draw- from 400 to 750 mA, Vs ~100mA for other zones. But the zone works fine. I do not know the solenoid brand. It’s put in by the builder’s contractor about 25 years back and I never had to replace any of them. I have two questions for the experts here:
How to check if the excessive current draw is because of solenoid or some wiring insulation issues
Should I worry about getting this fixed or since it’s watering fine, should I just leave it alone.
Since the same contractor installed all the valves, I am assuming they must have used the same brand/model for all the zones. Any help is appreciated.
I would first disconnect the faulty zone wire at the controller and see if it still is over current. If not, try switching the faulty zone wire to with another zone and try both zones one at a time. If the fault still on the same zone (and the previous good zone is still good), it is something with the wire or solenoid. I would put it back and the go to the valve end. If you can swap zones at that end, you can isolate it to the wire or solenoid. It would seem likely to be the solenoid which many can be easily replaced. I personally would fix this as my understanding is that it does that when it is starting to fail and I would not want to chance it failing which might not water for a while when it does.
