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

Let me start my saying I'm a big time DIY guy and I fix pretty much anything however, I don't have a clue about sprinkler systems but have been reading and trying to educate myself.

I just moved into a new house and the sprinkler system will not work at all. I have trying to manually run the zones and still nothing. It's a Weathermatic SL1600. I ran the diagnostics and I keep getting "MVP short". I opened the display portion of the box and checked the wiring behind it and I do have a 2 wire connected to the MVP terminal so I'm guessing that I do have a Master Valve Pump.

There are 2 boxes located in my front yard that are inline with the water main coming from the street. Is this where the MVP is located? If it is, what am I looking for? I can take pics of what I found if that will help.

I really don't know what kind of shape this system is in but I can tell it has not been running for sometime by the looks of the yard. This is really a starting point, if I can get past this fault there could be more but right now that's all I'm getting.

Any direction would be very helpful. At this point, I don't even know what the zones are or how many I have. If I can get it to run manually, I will be able to check the rest of the system.

Thanks!

I have a volt meter so no problem there. Two questions, 1. Am I checking the voltage at the control panel or at the valve itself. I looked at what i thought was the master valve pump and there were no wires or anything that I could see. Do I need to remove something to get to the wires?

*****Update*****

I did some more investigating this weekend and this is what I found:

I looked behind the control panel and got the color of all the wires. I systematically went to each of those valves (the round holes covered with the green plastic lids) and looked for any broken wires or visible issues. The main wires go from my garage through the wall and out of the side of the house and into the ground. I read where they "usually" don't run them under the driveway so I started on the side and into the back yard.

In the back yard I found a cable with a bundle of wires in it that had been cut and is just laying in the back yard. All the colors match so I'm pretty sure these are the wires coming from the controller. When I pulled on it a bit..it's partially buried on one end but it appears that it's leading to a set of valves in the back yard. I can see where the valves are wired together but I'm thinking the main wire is cut. If I pull on the wires connected to the valves, I can tell they are connected together. There is a wire in the center hole that's going under ground and I can't tell if it's connected or not.

The plan now is to dig from the valves back and try to find the other end of that cut cable. I was planning on splicing the cable back together and then going from there. I'm not sure how the cable was cut but I should be able to splice it together if I can find the other part.

Am I on the right track? Is there a reading that I can take from the cut wires to confirm that it's leading back to the controller? I know I need to be careful digging so that I don't cut through anything else.

well did some digging yesterday and that wire I found in the yard does not appear to be going to my system. I dug up a good portion of the yard and traced the wires, looks like they go back to the controller. Back to square one!