Two zones wired to one slot Rachio 3

Hi, concerns over water pressure aside, is it possible to wire two solenoids into one slot? The community says yes regarding older models; however, I can find no replies about Rachio 3. thank you.

Besides water pressure, the other concern is about how much amperage is being drawn. If you have a master valve or pump, that might be an issue. If not, that should not be an issue. The only exception is if the solenoids are getting older and are already drawing more amps. Do you happen to have the Rachio valve monitoring option? If so, that can help you to know the numbers which will help know if it will work. If you do not and it is overcurrent, it should give you a zone fault.

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Thank you Thomas. No I don’t have the valve monitoring option. Not sure of exact solenoid age but easy 10 years or more. Today I connected about 20 valves into 12 slots and the rachio came back with a red flashing light in the first quadrant. I checked the slots with a volt meter. No zone marked voltage when activated with the wires connected. If I took the wires out, then I would get 24 V.
I’m afraid I’ve zapped the controller because holding either the stop or play button will NOT force a factory reset–the red light keeps on flashing. Also the red flashing persists even with all the wires disconnected.

I likely would have got a 16 zone Rachio instead of 12. When it came back with a red flashing light in the first quadrant, are you talking about booting up? Did you look at Light Codes (Rachio 3) to see if something matches there?

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You can run up to 3 valves on Rachio, whether that is 3 zone valves, or 2 zone valves and a master. I’ve had 3 zones wired up for over 5 years after I switched to Hunter MP nozzles. It was supposed to be temporary until I re-piped the zones together, but here we are… :rofl:

Thanks! Which Rachio unit do you have?

I’ve got Gen1, 2 and 3’s running like this…