Your sprinkler controllers can be your best friend until something gets out of hand. There is no bigger nightmare than to have your sprinkler controllers develop an issue that you seem to have no idea about. At that moment, you have to call in a lawn sprinkler repairs company.
In this post, we will discuss the five problems that you are most likely to encounter with your sprinkler controllers and how you can fix these problems. Lawn sprinkler controllers repair can be a bit tacky but we will do our best to walk through fixing these common sprinkler repairs:
The Inactive controller
The first of the most common problems your sprinkler can give you is for it to go inactive. This state can cause a lot of pandemonium in that you don’t even know whether you should call in a sprinkler repair service provider or just bang on the sprinkler till it comes up and resumes activity.
Imagine this scenario; you set all of your watering times on a new sprinkler controller system and you leave it. Hours after, sprinkling should have started but here goes nothing. You have checked everywhere to see if there is a leak or a blockage to your irrigation system but you have not found any. You are already contemplating calling in a lawn sprinkler repair firm.
The hack is really simple; even though your scheduled time is programmed, your sprinkler will still not run if the controller is not set to auto. It is only when the controller is set to auto that the settings will take effect. You don’t need a sprinkler repair, just a few push of the buttons.
The Blank display
Your sprinkler controllers system might have at one point or the other experienced a form of service disruption that has caused it to go offline. When this happens, your sprinkler will go blank and even when power is restored, your sprinkler might not come back on.
When this happens, there are a lot of ripple effects, all of your settings are wiped out and your entire sprinkler system goes offline. At this point, it would look logical to call in a lawn sprinkler repair service provider, but then, you can fix this issue all by yourself.
All you have to do is locate the reset button on your sprinkler controller, this is usually a small inverted button. Once you do, use a thin object to prop it until your screen comes alive. There you go, you just fixed your blank display.
The off-schedule watering
What can be more distressing than coming back from work to find out that your sprinkler didn’t water your lawn when you have scheduled it to? If you find that your system is watering at times it should not, chances are that the manual override key may have been accidentally activated.
The easiest way to clear up this issue is to turn the dial to the off position for a minute or two and then set it back to run. If the problem persists, check the watering start times for an unwanted scheduled time and delete it. If you are still experiencing the same issues after all these hacks, you will have to call in a lawn sprinkler repair firm.
The valve failure
When this happens, it is usually because the run time or watering duration time has not been set. You can remedy this by twisting the controller dial to the desired valve. If the run time is blank, use the up and down buttons to set a duration time.
If, however, you see the alarm light go off or an error message on the controller display, you may be dealing with a valve solenoid issue which may require you to replace the connecting irrigation wire.
Controller won’t run in manual mode
It could happen that your sprinkler controllers won’t come out of auto mode to run in the manual mode. If this happens, there is no need to panic. Just override the system by resetting it and you should be back to the actual system where you can ease out of auto mode.
You have got this! You can troubleshoot your sprinkler controller system all by yourself.