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

In the process of replacing my Imperial Valet timer with a Hunter Pro-C, I decided to replace ALL existing wiring from the inside of my garage to the outside landscaping (as much as I reasonably could). I have only been living at my new house for two years and the previous (original) owner had no clue about the location of any zone valves so I was left to figure it out myself.

As I was trenching today I identified a zone box (I'll call this Box 1) housing my master zone value (right next to where the plumbing comes from my house) and about 2 feet away another larger box (Box 2) which housed the two zone valves that control both front yard zones. There was ALSO a 4 -lead wire feeding into Box 2, which I determined (based on the old wiring) was for my three backyard zones (one of the four wires was the neutral). This physical layout didn't make sense to me....if you have a master valve shouldn't it be feeding all other zone valves in a common geographical area? In other words, shouldn't Box 2 contain all five valves?

The only think I can think of is that the master valve is feeding a manifold somewhere nearby and the water output of the manifold (for the two front yard valves) backtracks to Box 2 where the respective zone valves allow water to pass when one of the front yard zones is turned on. I'm open to other theories.

In any case I ran my new zone valve wiring all the way to Box 1 and Box 2 replacing all old wiring (with the exception of the wires that fed my backyard zones). Man, what a crappy job the original installer did on the wiring. Now it looks professional like it should have been in the first place. I even protected the new wiring with PVC conduit about a foot underground and did a really good job with the wiring and connection endpoints.

Even though I'm still scratching my head, all 5 zones work and to top it off my Roam remote control works from any part of my property even though I mounted the smart port directly to the side of the controller inside my garage.

If my zone valves were in an open part of my property I would have no problem probing for the location of my other zone valve box. However I was working behind my Azaleas which was a real pain. Next to my Azaleas is my paver walkway and there was no way I was going to tear that up. One battle at a time.

Quoted from "electrifiedmale"

My ROAM works great too. I can even sit in my living room and turn on the sprinklers and my receiver port is in the garage also.

Awesome, good to know I'm not the only person that did this. Did you mount it right on the controller box? I carefully bored a hole into the side to fit the smart port and used a romex connector nut on the inside to hold it in place. I'll take a pic tonight. I just wish the remote had a feedback mechanism to tell me how much time is left on the current zone, instead of going into powersave mode. The only way I can tell that a zone is done running is when I hear the water stop running (I can faintly hear it running under my living room floor). I really have no reason to complain though....I just went from a noisy malfunctioning mechanical timer to a self-installed (with a lot of helpful advice from Wet_Boots) reasonably-priced remote controlled system. Out of curiousity, can a Hunter irrigation system be made to operate via a WiFi controller and software? I ask because I also just installed a Honeywell wifi thermostat (one zone, thermostat is located on 2nd floor) to control our central A/C. With the Honeywell Android app on our phones we can now control the temp setting from the couch or from hundreds of miles away.

Quoted from "electrifiedmale"

I just wish the system would come on and go off quicker than what it does while using the ROAM, but I can easily live with what it is.

Mine doesn't have any major delay. When I start a zone I see it sending the signal and less than 5 seconds later my heads are popping out of the ground.