Help! I woke up this morning to a zone running and nothing was scheduled. The app was not showing that the zone was running. I used the app to try to manually turn of then turn off the zone that did not work. I was able to run another zone manually which turned off the original zone, but as soon as that zone was stopped the original zone that was running turned back on.
I then put the Rachio on standby, the zone still continued to run. I then unplugged the Rachio from power and the zone still continued to run. Finally the only thing I could do was turn the water off at the backflow.
What could be causing this? Thanks!
Sounds like a short in the system. Try to remove the wire at the zone from the rachio. Did that stop the zone? If no the short if somewhere in the wiring and not at the system.
With Rachio unplugged and the zone running, no power should be going to the valve to leave it open. Disconnecting the wire at the Rachio should give the same result and is certainly a good thing to try. You may even disconnect the wire at the valve itself. It sounds to me like a problem may exists with the valve.
@Thomas_Lerman I too think it’s at the valve. But hoping that removing wires would help confirm.
1 Like
Thanks everyone for the quick replies. It was a bad valve. Replaced yesterday and all good. Although it is disconcerting when you’re not able to shut off a zone with the controller!
Its interesting that the zone turned off when another zone came on though. Somehow the pressure pushed through the valve, but with another zone it wasn’t enough, but resumed again when full static was available.
@guycros: I am glad we were able to help diagnose the problem. Good work in actually doing the work so quickly (all we had to do was type). It is nice that it was the valve instead of the controller or something worse. Hopefully it was easy to replace for you.
Generally, this is a piece of grit or a rust flake holding the valve open.
Don’t discard the valve, instead, do this:
- Turn off the water, or you will get a faceful…
- Slide under the valve a clean plastic tray or piece of wood, or if too tight, plastic bag to keep the little bits clean and not getting lost in the dirt.
- Remove the 6 or 8 screws that hold the top in place, and carefully pry the top of the valve off the base.
- Catch the little spring plunger thing, and note which way up it is
- Pull off the rubber membrane
- See one, or typically a bunch of small grains of rock, pebbles, or rust in the center of the valve body.
- Blow them out with a forceful exhale. Or vac them out with a wet-and-dry vac.
- Make sure everything is really clean - no grit, sand, leaves, wood chips in the body, or stuck to the diaphragm, or on your hands. Being wet and in a hole in the ground, it’s really easy to put back more dirt than you took out.
- Lay the rubber diaphragm down again, getting the keying pins through the proper holes so that the thing is oriented properly.
- Replace the top with the springy widget in it’s proper place, and press it down by hand to make sure it all seats well.
- Replace the screws, getting all finger tight first, then tightening in “dispersed” sequence (if the screws are on a clock face, tighten 12 oclock, then 6 oclock, then 2 oclock, then 8 oclock, then 4 oclock, and finally 10 oclock).
- Turn on the water, and operate the channel and some others a few times to check it works.
Hey magic, it all works again!
I have a 30,000 gallon rainwater capture tank, which tends to get a bit of silt in the bottom.
Even though I have a filter, it seems like I get silt in my valves at the end of summer every year as the tank gets low. If I discarded the valves every time, it would cost a fortune!
1 Like