Replacing Hunter Pro C 16 Zone with Rachio 3

Troubleshooting Tech Support
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Hello to all. I’m gearing up to replace a Hunter Pro C 16-Zone controller with the Rachio 3. I had the 8-Zone controller at my old house and it was a much simpler system that i installed years ago. I was getting ready to start moving over when i noticed zone 1 has two wires coming into it as you can see in the picture below. There will be no empty zones to separate them into two ports and i’m wondering if i can even install the Rachio controller. Would be curious as to anyone’s thoughts who may have dealt with something similar?

Thanks in advance!

Rachio 3|375x5002023-06-23T05:00:00Z

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I have not done that, but know many people have and they were successful, such as Can rachio open two valves to water a single zone? - Troubleshooting / Tech Support - Rachio Community

The two ways it can be affected:

  1. Not enough pressure: Obviously, you have done this before, so it will not be a problem for you
  2. Too much power (amps): It looks like you have a Pump/Master Valve. With this and two valves, you should not have any trouble with this either . . . unless POSSIBLY you have a rather old valve, valve about to go bad, or a high drain pump start relay. It you want to post specs, that might be helpful.

It is great to have the picture you posted, I would suggest running each zone before disconnecting to make sure each zone works, label the wires before disconnecting, and remember to configure the Pump / Master Valve. I would guess the two white wires at the bottom of the image going to the left side of the Hunter are for Common, which go to “C” on Rachio (3 “C” terminals exist, so you do not have to go in the same spot). Use the Rachio supplied power, not the Hunter power. If you have a sensor, I suggest not using that at this time. You can hook that up later, but many do not.

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@Slwiffleball23 - I echo @Thomas_Lerman suggestions. I would add after a test run of all the zones, to disconnect one of the zone one wires, run zone one to see where it waters and then connect only the other wire and re-run zone one to see where it waters. I would do this so it can be identified if there are two separate zones and where they are. There is a small chance that they ran two wires to the same solenoid to provide more current.

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Thanks to you both! Will give it a try (hopefully this weekend) and report back. Appreciate you taking the time to reply.

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You should be fine. Rachio can run up to 3 valves at a time. It looks like you have a master valve in your system, so that would limit you to 2 zones tied together, making the MV the third.

I currently have 3 zones in each of my 3 front yard sections tied together when I switched from pop up spray nozzles to MP-Rotator nozzles. It was supposed to be temporary until I had time to dig up and re-pipe my zones, but here we are 3 years later, still wired together… :face_with_peeking_eye:

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