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

I bought my home about a year ago. It's a older home that was remodeled completely. The company that was selling the house didn't advertise it but there was a irrigation system apart of the home that I noticed doing one of the walk throughs. I had my inspector take a look at the system. The company had the water turned off for the winter but he said all the parts were there and functional and should work after turning the water back on.

I didn't use it any last year as I was away on business most of the time. I'm wanting to do some gardening this year, so I recently tried to turn the system on to test everything to make sure it works properly. The controller (Rainbird ESP - 8 ) works and I am able to program all the zones. Problem is none of the zones actually come on. The panel shows them as running but nothing happens.

I couldn't find the valves as the company that remodeled the home buried them about 5 inches below the ground. I dug up the line and followed it back to find the valves (thankfully it was only about 20 feet work of digging). There is no visible damage to the line after I dug it up. I manually opened each of the valves and everything works fine then (I was honestly surprised to find heads I didn't know were in the yard as I thought I had them all mapped). The only thing I noticed that was odd was that there's a gray wire that runs from the valves to some place I have yet to determine. It doesn't lead back to the control box. The wire looks like a flat version of a phone wire.

Admittedly I don't know too much about these systems but any help yall can provide would be appreciated. All the people at Lowes and Home Depot want to do is sell me a new controller for $150.

I forgot to mention I tried that already. I tested on each zone and couldn't get a reading at any zone when the system was running.