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

My wife and I bought this house just over 8 months ago. The house was built in 1996. We required that the previous owner install a new controller which is a Rain Bird ESP-M. Due to the drought in Texas, we are under stage 3 watering restrictions so we can only run our system once every 2 weeks. About 6 weeks ago I turned on the system by starting each zone in order manually. Each zone was set to water about 6 or 7 minutes. A couple hours later I could hear the water running. I went out to check what it was and discovered that all of the zones were running simultaneously with consequent low pressure. Water was either flooding my lawn or running down the street or alley. I finally found the master valve in a "Irrigation box" near the main water box in the parkway just off the street curb. I shut it off. I have not been able to fix the system since. It does not matter what I do with the controller, the zones will all run simultaneously if the master valve is turned on. I can only find one solenoid box which is the front yard. It seems like there should be 6 solenoid boxes but I can only find one. There is 24 volts showing between the red wire and the blue wire inside my controller. There is apparently no power at the front yard solenoid box. I stripped the blue wire in there and crossed it with the white wire but nothing showed on my multimeter.

Ideas? Suggestions?

The very first night this happened, I unplugged the controller. All zones continued to run. Since then I have also turned off the main valve, unplugged the controller and then turned on the main valve. All zones turn on again. As I said before, all zones run no matter what I do with the controller: unplugged, manual operation, auto operation, on position, off position .... all zones run.

Just today I found a second solenoid box in the front yard so now I have something else to work with. It's going to rain within the next 24 hours or so here so I will probably not get to work with it again until this coming weekend. Just curious, why would they put two solenoid boxes in the same side of the front yard? You would think they would be spread out. Unless, of course, one of those boxes is for the landscaping in front of the house (on the front wall). Both of these boxes are right on the surface so I am puzzled why I can't find the other boxes.

Thanks again for the suggestions. Everything helps. I just don't want to spend 5 or 6 hundred dollars on a repair service.

I'll try to describe what I have.
I have a Rainbird ESP-M controller in the garage mounted on the wall. There are 6 red/blue pairs of wires in there so yes, we got a 6 valve system. Out in the parkway next to the curb there is a large green box. It is only about 4 feet from the master water box (city). It has what appears to be the Febco Double Check Assembly. That is the box I call the master valve box. It has a blue handle in it (one of two) that I use to shut off the water to the whole system. When I open it back up all of the sprinker heads in all of the zones turn on. Some turn on more than others. The one nearest the mail box just leaks out under the grass and out over the curb. Same with the sprinkler head that is furthest away at the far end of the driveway next to the alley. The ones near the a/c units on the north side actually spray as well as the ones in the back yard. But none of them spray full pressure like normal operation.
I have two solenoid boxes: small round green boxes. They have a bunch of wires in there (6)and one solenoid black plastic cylinder sticking straight up. That cylinder is only about 1 inch in diameter. In one box it is unlabeled and looks to have been maybe blue in color originally. In the other box it says on on top and off on the bottom. On the side it says either 1/4 turn or 3/4 turn. I can't read it as the number on top is worn. In between the on and the off is a slot in the top surface. A slot to be operated by a large flat blade screwdriver I think?
That's my system so far as I know. I have probed extensively around the back two corners of the house to try to find other boxes with no success. Extensively means I probed well over an hour on each corner.
I operated the system normally from July through about December 1st. At that time we went to phase 3 water restrictions and are only allowed to water every two weeks on our designated day.
My brother-in-law who has his master plumbers ticket says he believes it is a low pressure situation. He says that the solenoids open and close by water pressure. Low pressure causes the diaphrams to stay open and water to leak through. We are in a drought situation here in the north Texas area. We believe the over all water pressure from the city to be not as high as it use to be. I empty out scale (green stuff) from my kitchen sink screen about every two weeks now. As to the digging. We have had none in our lawn but the city had something dug up in the street about 2 blocks away maybe 3-4 weeks before this problem occurred in January. Based on all this, I believe the last post to be correct and that we have a water pressure problem.

I have photos but I can't post them here. I took a pic of the parkway box assembly (that I believe is a Febco) and took it to setting 0 in my Photoshop elements. It is still 31k in size so the forum software won't accept it. I would be happy to send photos to anybody if there is a safe way to exchange email addresses.