How to diagnosing flowmeter or controller not working?

Troubleshooting
1

I’m having trouble diagnosing whether it’s the flowmeter or the controller. I have a wired everydrop 1004 flow sensor and it’s been working fine for over a year and now it’s failing to read flow. I’ve attached my voltmeter to S1 and -24 and don’t get a reasonable reading. Has my gen3 controller gone bad? How can I test it?

2

Hi @crc2004

I’m sorry that you’re having this issue with your wired flow meter. The issue could be due to a faulty flow meter or issues at the controller’s sensor terminals.

There are a couple of process of elimination steps that you can take to better determine the cause of the issue. First, is the Everydrop Meter that you have the model with the digital display? A quick way to determine if the flow meter has stopped working is to calibrate a zone while observing the digital display. If the Rachio app reports zero flow but you are observing flow on the digital display, there might be a wiring or terminal issue.

Next, you can further determine if there is a wiring or terminal issue by simulating the “pulses” that the meter is sending to the sensor terminal ports. You can do this by “tapping” the sensor common wire to the 24 VAC - terminal. This means inserting and removing the sensor common wire into the port continuously while running a calibration in the app. This is a somewhat tedious task and requires that you push the terminal lever through the duration of the test and insert and re-insert the sensor common wire during the calibration. I’ve worked with a customer who installed a simple switch in the middle of the common wire to make it a little more bearable. You might get a “low flow” reading from the zone, but it should not be zero.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please send an email to our Support Team (support@rachio.com).

Thanks!

3

I am having this exact issue. All of a sudden the flow meter “detects low leak/pressure”… I checked the zones that were tripping this message and water is coming out fine. I even removed the reinserted the-24 and then it will work but then it won’t on the next. This started to happen after we had power blip outages recently… any idea how to fix this? Thanks.