Irrigation Problems

 Linda wanted to water some new plants in the front yard, so I went out to turn on those zones of the irrigation system.  The water supply for the irrigation system is controlled by a valve near the water meter -- a big yellow lever is used to turn it on or off.  We turned it off back in October.  We turned it on now.

 But nothing worked.  It seemed that there was a trickle getting thru, but not enough to see anything in the yard.

 We suspected it was the irrigation controller.  The controller is in the  garage, and controls all the valves that open the various irrigation zones.  It normally works on a timed schedule, but also allows manual operation.  The schedule is set to water on Wednesday morning.  But the controller is so old that it does not "know" which day is Wednesday, when it is told what year it is.  

 

I think the internal tables that keep track of leap years stopped working in 2000.  Leap years are multiple-of-four, but not for centuries, unless it is a multiple of 400.  So 2000 was a leap year, but the controller didn't think so.  Or something like that.  There are only 14 different "year" calendars -- defined by the day of the week that January 1 falls on, plus the leap year variants.  But telling the controller it was 2026 doesn't get the correct calendar.  I had to lie and say it was 2038 (or something like that) to get the correct calendar.

So we replaced the controller.  We bought a new Orbit 12-zone irrigation controller.

 First we removed the old controller, making sure that the wires to each zone were properly numbered.  

 Then we installed the new controller.  Originally it was too high up on the wall, and one of the zone wires would not reach where it needed to attach, so we lowered it on the wall, allowing everything to be wired.

 Then we could plug it in and start it up.

The entire process took about 3 hours, but still the system would not work.  We had exactly the same behavior as before.

At this point, we decided to call for professional help.  We called Sprinkler Medics.  We had used them before.  It took a week or so before they could come out.

When the guy showed up, it took him about 5 minutes to solve the problem.

It turns out that there is more than one cut-off valve for  the sprinkler mechanism.  The big yellow handle is attached to a back-flow preventer and it has maybe 3 different cut-off values.  One of the other valves had been turned off.  Probably by the plumber when he was fixing the leak in the neighbor's water line. 

 

Turning that second cut-off valve on solved our problem.

While the technician from Sprinkler Medics was here, he checked out all the system ($115).  Found one broken head, which I replaced.  So we should be good to go once we get to irrigation season.