I’m looking to replace my Rainbird ESP-12LX plus as I believe it’s failing and definitely over 20 years old surprisingly. Would the Ranchio 3 be a compatible replacement?
Everything that I see looks like it is a pretty straight replacement. I did not find the exact manual, so I could not check everything that I would like. It looks like the input voltage is 24VAC which I would guess all of your valve are also 24VAC (not 24VDC or anything else). It also seems that you have standard valves and not any “indexed” valves.
I always recommend:
- Make sure all the valves (including the master valve/pump) and zones are working
- I see two COM wires, is one for the master valve/pump and the other for the zone vales?
- If you do not have a map of where your valves are and for which zones, I would consider making one, even looking at the wires especially the common
- Use the standard power supply from Rachio that has the barrel connector
- Understand what sensor you have and how many wires are coming from it. If more than the two wires that I see, we might have to move some wires
- Make sure all wires are labeled
- When connecting to Rachio without using the sensor & once that works, consider leaving it for a while without the sensor as most do not end up using it. You can always connect it later if you really want to. In any case, maybe let us know which model that is and we can see if we can find the manual for it.
If the sensor (#5 above) is just the two wires and the two common wires are just going straight to the valves as I suspect, then it should be easy:
- Barrel connector for power
- White wires from two COM terminals to two C connectors
- Black wire from MV terminal to M connector
- Red wires from 1-8 terminals to 1-8 connectors
- Sensor not hooked up (at least for now)
- Configure within the app the M function
- Ready to test