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Zones run continously

Arlene

New Member

Posts: 2

1

Wednesday, April 5th 2006, 5:35pm

Zones run continously

A little background on my system. About 1 years, Zone 1 started to run continously. The rest of the zones worked fine. I had to open the solenoid a little to let some water out and then Zone 1 would work, but never shut off.The other zones would go through their cycle and shut off.

About 3 months ago, the pump ended up running with no water and I burned the pump up. I just had my neighbor replace the pump,and the pressure switch. The only way to get the pump on and off is by turning the circuit breaker off in the garage.

It runs great, except now all 4 zones come on. My neighbor replaced the valve in Zone 1,cleaned the other 3 valves. Same problem. The timer is a Rainbird PC401(original timer).


The timer is fine. I unplugged it and turned the pump on and all 4 zones came on. The wires are connected to the timer and to the valves.

I'm about at my witts end with this. Any suggestions? I have to keep a post it note nearby, so I remember to turn the pump off. Of course, with 4 zones running at once, there's a loss of pressure.

Wet_Boots

Supreme Member

Posts: 4,102

Location: Metro NYC

2

Thursday, April 6th 2006, 5:57am

Rebuild this thing right, and the grief will go away. If the zone valves don't have flow controls, replace them with ones that do. This is important. Throttle down the flow controls, and the valves will shut off with much more reliability.

Reinstall a pressure switch on that pump, along with a small pressure tank. It can even be the tiny kind of expansion tank you see on hot-water furnaces. The idea is to give the pump something to work against when the valves are off. This works on a booster pump for city water, as well as a shallow-well pump. The zone valves work better with a minimum supply pressure.

Speaking of when the valves are off, the next level of pump protection is a pressure relief valve, which will allow the pump to safely blow water from the system, rather than burn out, should the pressure switch fail.

Arlene

New Member

Posts: 2

3

Thursday, April 6th 2006, 4:36pm

Thanks for the info Wet Boots.

I do have a pressure relief valve attached to the pump. The strangest thing happened today. I manually turned the system on(flipped the circuit breaker on) and all zones came onexcept Zone 3. thats the only zone that I was then able to control using the timer.

My neighbor looked at the wiring and rewired the Comm. wire to the valves. Now Zone 3 cant be controlled again.

He checked out the wire, the wire is in a jacket except for the areas that are wired to the valve. I'm starting to wonder if maybe it is the timer.

Wet_Boots

Supreme Member

Posts: 4,102

Location: Metro NYC

4

Friday, April 7th 2006, 2:15am

Get a multimeter and check the wiring and the controller. Otherwise, you're guessing. If you're pumping from a shallow well, the little pressure tank/switch addition will help insure that you keep your pump primed, and can reliably water while you're not around. I use flow-control zone valves (throttled down) on a well-point install - standard ones don't perform as well, and sticking open is one way they fail to perform.
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