Hello everyone,
I’m hoping someone can help point me in the right direction. I recently purchased a Rachio 3 and attempted to replace my existing Rain Bird controller, but I’ve run into an issue.
On the Rain Bird controller, I had 6 zones that were wired in series with a Rain Bird rain sensor, and all zones worked correctly. After wiring the Rachio 3 and testing each zone, I noticed that the entire right side of my yard no longer waters, even though those areas worked previously.
I was told this may be due to shared or unconventional wiring between valves (possibly multiple valves tied together or a common wire setup that the Rain Bird tolerated but the Rachio does not). I want to understand whether:
This wiring configuration is preventing the Rachio from activating certain valves
There’s a proper way to re-wire or combine zones so all areas of the yard still function
Or if I need to reconfigure the zones in a different way for the Rachio to work correctly
Any guidance on how to wire the Rachio correctly in this situation—or what to look for when tracing the valve wiring—would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your help.
What are the wires to the left above the hole for what looks like power on the Rain Bird (RB)?
On the RB, I am seeing zones 1-6 as green, white, blue, yellow, orange, brown, and then nothing hooked to COM (well, I see a red on the right connected to a red on the left).
Rachio seems to be orange, brown, blue, yellow, white, red, black, and then green to C.
Where is red & black coming from and why is green is a zone for one and C for the other?
the wiring on the top right is power, not concern there however, there some merge wiring between the rain sensor and the controller the red from valves was connected to the red from rain sensor, the green from vslve was connected to white from rain sensor, the black from rainbird sensor was connected to COM on the rainbird controller, and the green from rainbird sensor is connected to zone 1 on rainbird controller, the remaining wires connected to the rainbird controller come directly from the valves, hope that helps clarift , and thanks for the support
Right, Rain Bird power is not used on Rachio. I was wondering if you had a sensor on Rain Bird, but noticed it was not hooked up to the sensor connections on the Rain Bird. It is in series with ground. The rain sensor on Rachio does get hooked up differently no matter which sensor it is. I would get the Rachio working without the rain sensor first. Many do not use a rain sensor anymore because of the weather intelligence. Sprinkler common should be connected to the C terminal whether a rain sensor is used or not. I will continue this posting later when I am on the computer instead of the phone
sounds good thanks , looking at my valve I belive the merge wiring come from the green and white cable see Pic below
Hard to tell what is going on in the sprinkler box. Is the thin white & green ground going to the controller? Are all the red in the same wirenut going to valves for ground?
Not sure on that, what i can is that is tested the solenoid manually and I figure that the one higher below and it turns on my left side sprinklers, however no single wire configuration on the rachio controller turns on the left side sprinklers. Note from what I can see one of the wires from the solenoid is connected to that bundle where the green white wire is connected and the other is connected to a black wire which I believe is the black wire that come out on the controller side, see pictures below
Maybe the thin green, white, and black wires are Common???
@Jason21 It looks like the Rainbirt SMRT-Y is more complicated than a rain gauge and it is a soil moisture meter.
Here is the installation manual for it: https://www.rainbird.com/sites/default/files/media/documents/2018-02/man_SMRT-Y_EN.pdf
It calls for the white wire from the SMRT-Y to be the common wire, and that wire goes off the bottom of the picture. The thin black wire is the common wire to the SMRT-Y device.
The thin red wire connected to the thicker red wire with the blue wire cap looks to be zone 1 - according to the SMRT-Y manual.
Hope this helps.