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OFF position not working for RainBird ESP-6TM

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flacorps

New Member

Posts: 2

1

Tuesday, March 3rd 2009, 10:17am

OFF position not working for RainBird ESP-6TM

I have an ESP-6TM RainBird. A day or so ago I was going to do my civic duty in a water shortage by turning it off so that it would not sprinkle this morning (our assigned watering day) because we had a good rain on Sunday.

This morning I was surprised that it had run anyway, and thought that I had perhaps imagined turning the knob to the off posiiton or that my wife had turned it back... What I discovered was that the "off" position was not being registered by the unit. Turning the knob to the various positions was mostly successful, with a couple of positions requiring very precise positioning on one side of the detent or the other in order to get the LCD screen to accurately reflect what the arrow on the dial was pointing at. But all positions other than "OFF" ultimately did produce the desired display on the LCD screen. The only position that is not doing what it is supposed to do is "OFF", which instead causes the "ones" digit of the minutes display to flash (ex: if the time is 10:09, the "9" flashes). The unit is, however, still on and still going to run the sprinklers at its programmed time.

I'm reluctant to unplug the unit and pull the battery because frankly I don't want to go through all the reprogramming. Is there anything else I can try?

Thanks in advance!

mrfixit

Moderator

Posts: 1,511

Location: USA

2

Tuesday, March 3rd 2009, 8:27pm

disconnect the ground wire.

What you have described is the reason I wont install the Rainbird ESP series. This seems to be an ongoing problem with these controllers. Look into the Hunter SRC Plus for an indoor controller. If you don't want to swap out the controller or lose the programming you could simply disconnect the ground/common wire.

hi.todd

Supreme Member

Posts: 417

Location: Houston, Texas

3

Friday, March 6th 2009, 11:30pm

I am pretty sure that the desired result in the display when the timer is in the off position is to have the minute value blink.

The problem is that the system is still operating with a mind of its own. There is a design flaw that has been corrected and if your problem is with an ESP 4 modular controller there is a repair part that you can get free of charge from any professional irrigation supply house like a Ewing, Horizon, John Deer. There is a fix. This problem has been a problem for a lot of contractors and I am one of them.

I hope this was helpful.

I like some rainbird, but I have moved towards the hunter pro-c.

The repair part is worth the fix because it is free.

:thumbsup:
:thumbup: :thumbsup:

flacorps

New Member

Posts: 2

4

Friday, March 27th 2009, 10:39am

For Now The Other Profile with no sprinkling will handle it

I realized that the sprinkler system has two profiles that can run. One of them has never been set up with any sprinkling, so that makes it easy to just switch to it and have no watering occur (I think ... haven't tried it yet).

Meanwhile, I'll see about getting my hands on the free part.

As for what the display says when the knob is in the "off" position ... when it was working right I seem to remember it spelling out "OFF" at least briefly, just as on other occasions it spells out "On".

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