Rainbird Irrigation Help
 

Hi all...I am a part-time Villager in Orange Blossom Garden and have a four zone Hunter system with Rainbird heads that has been working fine for two years. Our lawn guy shut it off this summer when it was raining enough that we didn't need it. Our lawn guy did not turn the water off to the irrigation system. When I arrived this week, I noticed 3 of the 9 heads in zone 4 have puddles around them. I was able to manually run zones 1 - 3, but in zone 4, no heads will deploy. Any ideas on what steps I should take to troubleshoot and resolve this malfunction?

It sounds like your number four selinoid is bad.

I sent a PM, but I agree a bad valve would be a good place to check.

Agree...............bad valve by the house.

There are YouTube videos out there if you care to try.

Good Luck.

If you choose to have a contractor repair it, you might want to look into adding a Rain Sensor to you system (Mostly if you are gone for long periods of time).

They are not cheap, but the work great and pay for themselves.

Manually pull up one riser. Clip it so it stays up. Remove the head, effectively creating a geyser if system was running.
Inspect the filter on the head - is it clogged? If badly clogged, replace the head and retest.
If not clogged, turn on that zone. Do you have a 35 foot high stream of water?
If yes, then solenoid is ok, and heads are probably plugged with debris. Replace removed one with new and retest.
If no geyser, then bad solenoid or broken pipe.

After you get this repaired, change out your controller to a more sophisticated 1 by orbit called the b-hyve. It will cost you around $60 and in 15 minutes you will have this converted over. The b-hyve is a smart controller that won’t run when it’s wet or has rained x amount during the last couple days. The bhyve also connects to a local weather station and runs it watering from what the weather station is showing. The bhyve also runs off your phone so if you want to turn station 4 on for 20 mins while you are over in Japan or in NY, you can. I swapped out my last 2 homes to bhyve and have helped many friends do the same. The next step is that we are going to get our own personal weather station in the backyard so it is more accurate instead of relying on the weather station down the road or a few miles away.

Sprinklers
 

Might be the solenoid in the control box

The most likely cause of the problem is a bad solenoid set a word into the didn’t know the spelling off. It's very easy to replace yourself. The solenoids can fail two ways. Fail to open, or fail to close.

I agree that the Orbit B-Hyve controllers are far a superior choice. I replaced the sprinkler controllers with the B-Hyve controllers in two homes, plus a in-laws home. The Orbit B-Hyve controllers can be easily programmed, controlled, and monitored from your cellphone, no need to have a sprinkler guy control your sprinkler system adjustments, since it's so easy to do yourself. I had two 12 zone Orbit B-Hyve controllers in my Minnesota house, and I have three 12 zone and one 16 zone Orbit B-Hyve system in Florida. We have a lot of garden areas which use risers and drip systems for irrigation, plus the lawn irrigation heads. You're better off buying an Orbit B-Hyve controller, that you can easily control from anywhere. The models with more zones don't cost much more, and gives you the option to increase your zone count in the future.

I also install all the underground sprinkler pipes myself, at three homes so far. Maintaining a sprinkler system in Florida is much easier because you don't have all the hassles with blowing out the sprinkler system with compressed air to winterize the system every year. The cold weather can still damage some heads even when the system is blow out.

What color dress will the weather woman wear at your new weather station?

I second this. I had the orbit/b-hyve in my previous house in Minnesota and just installed it at my place here. Inexpensive and easy to install. You can control your sprinkler system from anywhere, create schedules, and manage zones individually. It's a great app. the weather feature is OK but it's not super accurate. You do need a decent Wi-Fi signal in your garage or wherever the device is installed though.

Thanks all for the feedback and suggestions. I've learned a lot about irrigations systems in the past 48 hours! They aren't so scary. It turned out to be in the valve. There is a plastic ring around the base of the diaphragm that had broken. Replacing the diaphragm did the trick. I'll look into the b-hyve.