Reticulation solenoid how does it work

John Edgar Park likes to make things and tell people about it. He builds project for Adafruit Industries. You can find him at jpixl. Our websites use cookies to improve your browsing experience. Some of these are essential for the basic functionalities of our websites. In addition, we use third-party cookies to help us analyze and understand usage. These will be stored in your browser only with your consent and you have the option to opt-out. Air will enter the pipe and resists any siphon effect.

The most common valve for in-ground irrigation systems is the solenoid. Each solenoid valve controls the sprinkler heads in a specific zone of your lawn or garden. A good understanding of how these valves work will prove beneficial if the sprinklers ever need to be repaired.

The process of opening solenoid valves starts at the controller. Controllers are attached to a set of these valves that are buried in a box at the beginning of the system.

The main water source is tapped into the box. The controller tells each valve when to open and for how long. A solenoid valve has a diaphragm that opens to allow water to flow through the pipeline to the sprinkler heads. When the solenoid coil that the wire is attached to is not energized, the diaphragm will remain closed. When the moment comes for a particular zone of your lawn to be watered, an electrical signal is sent from the controller.

The moment that electrical signal reaches the solenoid coil, there is an electromagnetic field created in the valve. Once the coil is energized, the resulting magnetic field is responsible for opening the diaphragm of the valve. That electrical signal from the controller is programmed to be active at a specific time of day and for a particular duration.

The occurring pressure in the pipeline will raise the sprinkler heads and your lawn will receive the liquid refreshment it requires. When that prescribed time is exhausted, the controller will break the electronic connection with the solenoid coil. That disconnection will remove the electromagnetic field from the valve and cause the diaphragm to close and the water will no longer flow to that zone. Systems like this are an investment in the lawn or garden you have worked so hard to create.

You have to ask yourself, are you always going to have the time and inclination to go outside and water the lawn the old fashioned way? In this day and age, the answer is probably not. You might also want to prepare your entire setup for the winter depending on where you live.

In addition to sprinkler system articles this site has a number of related guides that thousands of people read each and every month of the year. Here are a few good ones that may be of interest to you:. Skip to content By Brian Mounts May 26, Some of the primary pieces to the puzzle of a sprinkler system are the sprinkler valves.

Emergency Shut-Off Valve This valve needs to be placed as close as possible to your main water source. Sprinkler or Irrigation Control Valve The sprinkler or irrigation control valve is responsible for turning the sprinkler system on and off. Manual Control Valve This is the most simple form of a control valve. Remote Control Valve This valve is either electric or hydraulic.

Solenoid Control Valve The solenoid is the most popular design of control valve used in an irrigation system. Each solenoid is wrapped with an electric wire to receive the signal from the controller. Different Valve Styles The style of the sprinkler valve you may choose for each of these varies. Gate Valve This style is used primarily in the emergency shut-off valve. Ball Valve The ball valve is well suited to work in the emergency shut-off valve as well.

Those parts are what is known as the baffle. Angle Valve The angle valve is primarily used as a control valve. One selling point for these valves is that they do not require a separate backflow preventer. You can also house these valves in a valve box for protection from the weather. How Do Sprinkler Valves Work? The controller is connected by wire to each solenoid valve to instruct it when to open.

Automatic sprinklers make your life easier by taking you out of the equation. One component fibaro offers is a RGBW controller which can work with volt dc only.

I would like to use this to control the valves which means i need to switch to a 12vdc powersupply. Din rail. Would any 12 vdc power supply be ok? Any requirement on Ampere and wattage? Maybe a stupid question but i am not familiar with electronics.. The OpenSprinikler DC-powered version uses an innovative circuit design that drives sprinkler solenoids with DC-only voltage.

It solves the problem of solenoids requiring high impulse current vs. Ray, Nice article! Searching the webs I see a few people asking the same question I have and not finding answers. The question brought me to your article. Can I run multiple zones at once? Currently I balance all my zone loads to match my pump. I have a drip zone that causes the pump to cycle too frequently so I tie it to one of the other zones successfully running 2 valves with my orbit timer.

However, this limits my run time options for the drip zone. I would like to run it longer than my other zones. Is there a relay or chip I can tie in to multiple zones that would isolate them from each other and trigger the drip zone? Example, zone 1, 2, 3 would also trigger drip zone Hopefully not too outlandish of a question. You can run multiple zones at the same time: it depends on the output current of the transformer.

If the current rating is low, the transformer may not be able to supply enough current to keep many valves on at the same time. Once it sends power to the solenoid will the voltage drop? Thanks in advance. It should be ok: AC transformers are not regulated so typically output higher voltage when there is no load. As soon as circuit or solenoid draws current from it, the voltage will drop to 24 to 26 volt range.

I want to use a 24vac transformer and a switch to control 2 sprinkler valves separate switch for each valve to turn a misting system on and off. Would you recommend adding a fuse? If so how many amps? Ultimately it depends on the current rating of the valve, but 1 amp is plenty for a typical valve. I have an ancient irrigation system, To the best of my knowledge there is no transformer in the system.

Is it possible that the old solenoids operate off normal house current. Any thoughts? Thanks for the reply. Station 2 wouldnt work. When i pulled wire out of station 2 on timer and attached to number one station the zone came on and the timer started to smoke then zone turned off. Possible faulty solenoid? Probably shorted solenoid. You can measure the resistance on the two wires of the solenoid, typical 24VAC solenoids have resistance value about 20 to 50 ohm.

I found a blog post that provided a very good explanation on the differences. Thank you, Ray! Yours looks exceptionally good! Cheers, David K. Just received my OpenSprinkler bee and I have it hooked up to an existing system which used 24vac output voltage. Everything is working fine except when I activate a zone I can hear the solenoid lift momentarily but the valve does not stay open. Seems like it needs more current to keep the valve open.

Any tips? Make sure you use sufficiently thick wires as the wire resistance can be significant in limiting the current flow. Why not simply use a resistor with 27 Ohm in series and parallel to this resistor a uF 16V capacity electrolytic capacitor. I just tested my idea and it looks to work fine. With greetings from Germany, Berlin, Carsten. When I have power and moisture together I am mindful of corrosion.

Moisture and DC may result in electrolysis corrosion, using AC instead corrodes for one half cycle and restores it on the other polarity swing. If the AC is perfectly balanced then there should be no corrosion unlike using DC.

Are you referring to soil moisture sensor? The resistance value about 80 ohm, current is 0. I want to powered with 24VAC in order to use my valve for a long time and the solenoid is made for VAC voltage and I have read comments in this very useful page.

If the coil resistance measures 80ohm, 12V is slightly on the low side, you can go up to 15V, to provide 0. Thank you for replying, but in my case, I use 30AC, it works, but do you think the noise when valve is operated is OK, or it could be a problem for a long-term use? Yes, 30VAC is fine — these valves are designed to handle a pretty wide range of voltages.

Also, AC adapters are un-regulated, so if you measure 30VAC without load, it will probably drop to close to 24VAC when the valve is actually drawing current from it. Residual magnetism? I tried an AC non-latching?

The unit is supposed to do 1, 2 ,3 ,4, 5… or any seconds per any minutes during the daylight operational window. Are there DC non-latching solenoids I should be looking for? Are DC systems not designed for intermittent mist?

My AC one works fine at home on AC solenoids. I think the controller is dead. I have disconnected all zone wires from the non-working controller and now have access to the individual wires to each solenoid. Yes you can connect 24VAC between COM and any individual zone wire, and that zone should turn on, if the zone solenoid is good. I was wondering if it would be possible to replace the timer for a 24volt output, and thus replace the solenoid coil also for a 24volt output which I can find , and if the valve would work in this case???

Does anyone have advice for how to eliminate the back emf from the 24 VAC coils? That back EMF sometime locks up my microcomputer. Great analysis of 24 volt ac sprinklers. I have a six station Orbet sprinkler controller. I want to add a seventh zone but I am out of stations. Two existing zones are very small and low flow so water wise I could run them together. Can I use one controller output to start two Orbit valves?

I have two zones that turn on at the same time. I replace both the timer and all the valves still doing the same thing. I have tried this on both the 9. I am trying to provide a direct power source to the valve so that I can plug it into a powered humidity controller so that I can have my misting system controlled by the humidity level.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! These cheap adapters are often way under the current rating they claim. For example, it says output current is 1. I use this timer to control a 4 relay board to operate an electric motor.

My system is 12Vdc and my initial testing shows it works just fine. The common side becomes ground and the outputs are a couple volts less than input voltage. The internal board is rather simple with the primary driver being a transistor allowing current to flow.

I cannot speak to the loads it is capable of or the long term viability but i am super excited to have this simple timer to automate my chicken coop door.

Great, informative article. I have an old Rainbird system that came with a transformer with the following output: 24 VAC, 1. The Hunter transformer has 3 wires 2 yellows, 1 green. I assume the green is a ground. My volt meter shows both yellows together are around 24 volts. With the Hunter transformer, it appears both yellows are hot. Hi Ray, thanks for an informative article. From reading your article, I see that I will need to run 24VAC through the relays to power the solenoids on the valves.

I have 4 zones, so that means if I power all of them at once, I should need about 1A total coming from my 24VAC source. Do you think a wall transformer such as this can do the job?

Email will not be published. Website optional. Except noted otherwise, content on this site is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3. Feed on Posts Comments. So if we power the solenoids by 24VAC, 60Hz, which is the standard output of a sprinkler transformer, we will get a reactance of: This, plus the resistance, gives a total impedance of: Note that the reactance counts into the imaginary part of the impedance.

We only care about the magnitude, so the current rms would be: OK, so this is getting closer to the reality. OK, now if we redo the calculations, we will find out that the correct reactance is: and current rms os: The resulting current is about the same on the Hunter solenoid. Mike Lim says:. November 6, at pm. Bob says:. January 14, at pm. January 23, at pm. Wayne says:.

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