Sprinkler system repair
I’m in need of a sprinkler system repair. I have been having trouble with my lawn sprinklers. Since spring ended my lawn has looked terrible. It was definitely dry. The grass kept getting more brown by the day. At least that’s what I thought.
It’s got to be the sprinklers
I kept attributing the condition to the fact that my lawn had grown in elevation due to thatch buildup since it was first planted over forty years ago. So I had been working on replacing the four-inch rise sprinklers with six-inch rise sprinklers. I was counting on the new rise of the sprinklers to be able to get the water over the grass in front of them and spread the water evenly. At least that’s what I thought.
Yep, that grass is too tall
Now the lawn was only showing yellowing in the places furthest from the sprinklers. All the grass closest to each sprinkler was very green. It has to be that darn grass being too tall for the then too short sprinklers. At least that’s what I thought.
So I lowered my cutting height on my lawnmower an inch to help the sprinklers do their job. I finished the installation of the new six-inch rise sprinklers installed at the existing sod level. Now short grass and increased height of the new sprinklers should have the problem solved. At least that’s what I thought.
Let’s try this in manual mode
When I opened the manual bleed screw on the sprinkler valve to check my handiwork at sprinkler replacement it would work perfectly. So its time to sit back and watch the lawn get greener by the day. At least that’s what I thought. But it didn’t work that way. After a few days, I started checking the turf for water. I checked it the following morning after the sprinklers had operated. The turf was dry.
Questions questions
My lawn sprinklers are scheduled to start watering just after midnight. The water was not getting to the brown patches in the lawn. I’m going to need to check some things. Am I troubleshooting low pressure? Or is it a low pressure one zone problem? Or is it my sprinkler system not turning on? Do I have a sprinkler solenoid problem? I was full of questions.
The shotgun approach to troubleshooting
Since I had used the bleed screw and the valve worked flawlessly I began to think about troubleshooting a sprinkler solenoid. It could also be a bad wire from the controller with the whole wire bundle needing replacement. But that is jumping the gun. I realized that I had been troubleshooting this problem with a “shotgun approach”.
Some technicians use the shotgun approach to troubleshooting. This is
where the technician replaces components until they finally replace the faulty one and
the machine is running again. This approach usually results in greater down time and
replacing multiple components unnecessarily.
Back to basics
It was time to get back to basics. Time to let the sprinkler system do the talking and tell me what is wrong. So the first thing I would need to do is see what the system is actually doing when it is told to turn on. Not by me, but by the controller. I need to move the start time for the sprinkler to daylight hours so I can see the actual operation. Most sprinkler controllers have such a feature where you can force a single solenoid(into testing mode) or all the solenoids(in order) for a certain amount of time. This makes it easy to find a sprinkler zone not working. So that is what I did. Using the controller I forced the lawn solenoid to turn on. I was testing the sprinkler system electrical components and wiring.
Sprinkler zone not working troubleshooting
I listened as the water entered the lawn sprinkler pipe and watched as each sprinkler dribbled a meager amount of water. Not enough water to cause the sprinklers to pop up. Eye opener. Now I have the problem boiled down to the lawn sprinkler control circuit(all things electrical). So that means that it could be the solenoid, the wiring from the controller to the solenoid, and the controller itself as being the problem.
Process of elimination
It eliminated the valve as being the problem because I could force the valve to operate correctly by manually opening the bleed screw in the valve. It also removed the water pressure being low as the problem. The water pressure was high enough to cause the sprinklers to work properly under the manual operation. It also eliminated any blockage in the sprinkler system as being the problem because every sprinkler had worked properly under a manual operation cycle.
The simplest/easiest change first
The next thing in the troubleshooting process is to start with the smallest, easiest possible point. That point is the place where the wires connect from the controller wiring to the solenoids. So that is where I looked next.
Since these connections are exposed to the weather I cut off the wire nuts. I stripped the wires(both positive and ground/common wires) back to expose new unexposed, uncorroded wire(approximately 1/2″) on both the wires from the controller and the solenoid wires. I used new wire nuts to connect them. I disregarded any connections of the wires at the controller as being the problem. The controller is located inside the garage and all connections are protected from the weather.
Again I forced the lawn circuit to run. This time the output at the sprinklers was greatly changed. All sprinklers popped up and performed as they were intended to do. This time the system told me what the problem was, corrosion was the culprit all along. Eureka, I have found the problem.
Waterproof connectors
I need to place the new connections within a waterproof cap to eliminate any further problems. I must confess that I had been using them all along but somewhere I got lazy and shortcut the system and skipped embedding the wire nuts in grease caps. Mea Culpa.
I started to look for grease caps and found that some new products are available that may work as well or better as the old faithful grease caps. They have outdoor wire nuts that come filled with silicone that are all in one(wire nut and grease cap). The wire nut and the grease cap combined are perfect for weather-exposed connections.
One new item that looked really interesting is the heat shrink connector that has a solder connector in the middle activated by a heat gun. Also, there are two heat-activated adhesive seals to keep moisture away from the soldered connection. The solder connection is especially interesting because a solder connection is always(IMHO) better than a twisted connection.
Related Article: Sprinkler Valve Leaking
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