I’ve been reading about the Rachio products a lot and am hoping to replace a very dated RC-1230. This unit, in a house we purchased a few years ago, has a damaged timer wheel that will not transition from zone-to-zone at the end of the last watering season. I’m comfortable with low voltage wiring and with installation of home appliances.
There does appear to be a label for the wiring harness on this 12-zone unit.
Reading from the label on my controller, it lists the output voltage as 26.5V.
Would it be appropriate to consider replacing my unit with a Rachio V2 controller?
@JoeyPeligroso, good morning. Thanks for reaching out. Looking at your wiring, I believe you should be able to reference the label in the RC-1230 next to all of your wires to identify what wires go where:
I took a screenshot of your photo, so it’s a bit blurry, but these are the wires you’ll need to cross reference. The RC-1230 used a connector plug with the above labeled wires assigned to various zones. From the looks of your photos, you could use the label to identify the field wire it’s spliced with via the wire nut and label the field wire appropriately. From there it’s just a simple matching game.
Pending where you live, we might have a professional installer we can connect you with. If you’re interested in this option, please send our support team (support@rachio.com) an email with your zip code and we’ll see if we know anyone in your area.
Yes, definitely, I think the Smithsonian is collecting RC-1230’s now
I have replaced a few of these old units at some of my friends houses. Here’s a link to the original manual that may help. The RC-1230 is a 24volt unit.
I appreciate everyone who responded so promptly! I ordered my new Rachio V2 unit and it should be here this evening…thanks to our speedy friends at Amazon! I’ll check out that manual as well. Looks like I should be OK for getting started tomorrow with the wiring if the unit comes tonight.
I also checked my solenoids, and they do seem to be of the 24V nature…hard to tell as there was some dirt on the valves.
Per Emil’s suggestion above, I contacted the Smithsonian…they suggested that the issue with my old Rainbird unit may be that I did not “wind it up” prior to this seasons use. Looks like the Rachio will not require such care, thankfully!
I’ll post an update once I’ve got my new Rachio up and running!
Well, Amazon came through and delivered my Rachio same day. So, today I removed the old system. I started with the wiring harness…which despite being a complete rats nest, did have labeling corresponding to the manual and to the wiring diagram of the old Rainbird unit.
I used a label maker to label the outgoing wires to the solenoids, as I wanted to make sure that I could account for the wires when re-attached. Interestingly, one of the reasons my old rain sensor was not working was that it was not actually attached to the unit…though that was something that the old homeowner may have had some frustration with too!
Up and running since Wednesday, working perfectly! Shocking how much easier this is to use than the old Rainbird! I did not have to change any of the wiring I did last weekend and all zones are running well.
Pretty amazing before and after pictures.