I have an issue with my rachio 3 and 1 of my zones. The rachio has no errors and it says it watered the zone in question but it didn’t and i am unable to manually run that zone with the app. I am able to manually turn on the zone at the valve. The wire to the zone appears ok both at the valve and the controller. I’m a rookie at this stuff so please advise
@carrie5101 - good job confirming the valve works by manually activating it. I think there error domain has three possibilities.
a. The port on the Rachio went bad (rare). This can be tested by moving the non-working zone to an open terminal or if all the terminals are in use to swap terminals with a working zone. If the non-working zone works in a new terminal, then it is the terminal that went bad.
b. The wiring to the valve is bad/broken. If you have access to a multimeter (measures volts and ohms), take the zone wire out of the terminal and measure the resistivity down the line back to the Common wire (you may need to take the common wire out to get a good connection to it. The resistivity should be around 25 - 30 Ohms. If the resisitivity is very large (infinite) then there is a broken wire or connection. If the resisitivity is high then there could be corrosion in a connection. I’d suggest redoing both connections at the valve, cleaning the wire and using water proof wire nuts.
c. It could be the solenoid failed. One needs to shut the water off to replace the solenoid. Replacement solenoids are around $11 (they screw out). A bad solenoid could also lead to high resistivity reading that I mentioned in b. If you wanted to set the solenoid it could be swapped out with a working solenoid - but both sets of connections would need to be redone.
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Easy step-wise trouble-shooting procedure if you don’t have a meter:
At the controller: Swap the wire for the bad zone with one from a good zone. If what was the bad zone now works and what was the good zone does not: It’s not the controller. Otherwise, it is.
Swap them back to normal at the controller and swap wires between the bad zone and a good zone at the valve manifold. If the bad zone now works and the good zone does not: It’s not the wire. Otherwise: It is.
If it’s not the controller and it’s not the wire: It’s the valve/solenoid.
As @DLane noted: You may find, in all this, it was just a poor connection. E.g.: You do the swap, now both are working. You go “Eh???” You swap them back, and they both keep working. Was a bad connection.
Thanks for the help! It’s the wire so I’m replacing that.
Thanks for your help and advice! It’s the wire so I am replacing that.
There are no spares in the cable?
My cable (for eight zones) has four spares in it.
@carrie5101 - Glad to hear it. Did you check the solenoid? The break could be in the solenoid winding. If the solenoid is disconnected from the wires the resistivity test can be run on just the solenoid. Additionally, one can connect the wires together that went to the solenoid and one should have very low resistivity - unless the wire is broken.