Sprinkers in some zones stop working

We tested the sprinklers a few months ago and they all worked. Now only those in one zone work. All others don't respond at all, as if wires were cut. The control panel is in garage. On the outside wall I see the pipe containing the wires go to the ground. A few feet to the left there's a capped well (what do you call it?) about 4'' wide. This is the side of the zone that works. I looked inside the well and saw some wires and two cylinders. To the right of the wire pipe there's no such well. But around a far corner of the house I see two similar wells. They both have 2 white wires, 1 red wire and one or two cylinders in them. I suppose these are for the sprinklers and at least one cylinder is a solenoid. But none look in bad shape and the cylinders can't be (easily) taken out. Previous owner had a good drawing of sprinkler heads. But the current problem is I don't hear anything when the control panel dial is switched to any of these zones. How do I go about troubleshooting? If needed, I can show pictures. Thanks.

Yong Huang

Reply to
Yong Huang
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Reading between the lines, you may not have a lot of experience with these kinds of systems. This may be a time when you have to either bring in a friend with experience, or get someone expert to check out your system. You may not hear anything at your control panel, and perhaps you have solenoids that are mounted at a distance from the control panel, or perhaps you have a sequencer that operates with water pressure -- it's not clear from what you wrote. First guess would be you have a controller problem, which could merely mean replacing a couple of parts -- if you had a recent severe thunderstorm it may be that a lightning bolt fried some of your controls.

But from what you've written so far, I would look to someone with experience to do a physical inspection and offer help.

Reply to
JimR

I agree. I think the first time (at least) you should hire a professional to explain to you and watch them closely to learn as much as possible. Ask questions too to help yourself. Hopefully after that, you can do "most" of the maintenance. On my systems, the most often repair was replacing heads and after you see how to do it, it's not hard unless you can't dig into the soil.

Reply to
observer

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