SPRINKLER TALK FORUM - You Got Questions, We've Got Answers

For some reason zone 4 and zone 8 on my controller are both the same currently. Meaning if I set zone 4 on, then zone 4 and zone 8 are activated . If I put zone 8 on, then zone 8 and zone 4 are activate.

Advice welcome.

Quoted from "mrfixit"

Disconnect the number 8 wire from the controller and turn on 4. Are the both still running? If not there's a problem with the controller. But I'm assuming there are bare wires touching each other. Look at the valves or where any wires are exposed. Do any digging lately?
Sometimes the gardeners will hit the wiring with a weed eater and hook them up wrong.

Well a month or two ago I did have some irrigation techs come over to price me to lay a new cable down from my controller to the PSR. As the PSR was not receiving signal (24v) from controller to turn on, I fixed that issue myself.

However the techs took it upon themselves to diagnose the problem, with that they dug out one cable outside the yard near the controller box, and cut about a 8" off it, then used another wire in between the missing part to re-attach the cable together with screw caps. I changed the screw caps to blue ones as they had used regular orange ones.

What I did notice in the controller box was that zone 4 wire is black and zone 8 was dark blue, could it be possible that joining the wrong colors caused this?

I did some diagnostics.

If I disconnect zone 8 wire only on the controller and engage zone 8, zone 4 and 8 do not turn on,but if I start zone 4 , zone 8 turns on.


If I disconnet zone 4 wire only on the controller Zone 4 doesnt work nor does it also turn on zone 8. If I turn the controller to zone 8 then zone 8 only works as it should.



Confusing.

Quoted from "mrfixit"

Nope, not confusing. You've narrowed down the problem. It's in the wiring. Is there a spare wire you can use for number 8?
You could disconnect the existing wire from the 8 or 4 valve and hook up the spare wire to see if that fixes it.
The wires are crossed somewhere.
Joining the wrong colors would have only switched the zones. 8 comes in instead of 4. It sounds like the two wires are hooked together.

Thanks for your kind input. Yes, there is a spare wire in the controller box. I will try that tomorrow.

You mentioned and explained about crossed wires , then maybe it was me when I fixed the PSR power not working. Basically I followed the 2 wires from the PSR, ( there was no 24V at PSR with controller on) The length of cable was approx 8 feet, it fed into the nearest green valve box. I dont remember the colors that the two PSR cables connected to inside the valve box under the ground. I did however notice that 24V was present at that point but not leading down the 8 foot wires to the PSR. I disconnected 3 wires in there I recall, and layed a new 8 feet cable from PSR to the valve box and it all started working. I remember that it was not just 2 wires from PSR to the valve box, but if memory serves me correctly there was also two other wires capped to one of the wires to the PSR. So in total the two wires from the PSR connected to three wires in total in the valve box.

There was one spare wire in the controller box, I disconnected number 8 valve and connected the unused spare. This resulted in zone 8 not to engage and cause the pump to make a loud noise.

Quoted from "mrfixit"

Did you determine where that wire goes before hooking it up? Did you find it at the valves?

No, it was a spare one in the controller just unconnected . Connected the original wire back to valve 8 now.