I am planning on upgrading the rainbird controller that came with the house we just purchased to the Rachio. I decided to look over the wiring before heading to the store and I am a bit confused by the 2 comm wires. Would I leave those connected? The black wire that’s loose is for zone 6 which is just a spigot.
It looks like to me that you have 6 zone valves and either a master valve or a pump. The black wire at the C terminal looks similar to the black wire at the M terminal - I’m assuming they are going to same place. If its a master valve you would need the M terminal and Common for it to open.
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There is a pump for the irrigation well. My main question is will this be a simple swap from the Rainbird or am I going to need to bring a tech in? If it’s not going to be a simple switch then I’ll stick with the current controller since it works. Mostly I just wanted the tech features of the Rachio.
You should be able to do this yourself. My guess is your existing controller is switching a pump relay.
Basically you will connect the wiring in the photo above to the same terminal labels on your Rachio controller. Once you do you basically tell the controller through the app that you have a pump. Its pretty simple.
check out https://support.rachio.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013208407-Water-Pumps-Pump-Relays-
Good luck!
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The link helped a lot, thank you. It looks like it’s pretty straight forward and will mostly be swapping wires from one unit to the next.
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