Originally recorded August 2, 2015.

I had a solenoid on one of the valves go bad on my inground sprinkler system. Usually the way you'll find out is one section, or multiple sections of your lawn will start turning brown during the watering season, as most times sprinklers are not on during the day.

Once I had noticed the lawn was starting to turn brown, I went to the sprinkler timer and found the display was out. Figuring the battery was dead, I replaced it, and the display came back to life. But when I ran a manual cycle, none of the valves were opening. Turns out there was a circuit breaker in the timer control that had popped, which stopped ALL of the zones from operating.

After resetting the circuit breaker, the sprinklers appeared to work until the timer hit zone 4, at which point the breaker popped again.

This video shows how to use a VOM (VoltOhm Meter) to diagnose the problem and correctly repair it. VOMs are available at Home Centers, Harbor Freight Tools (sometimes even free with coupon), even WalMart might have a cheap one.

I measure the resistance between all of the solenoids, and found that zone 4 was a dead short. The dead short was what was causing the breaker to pop. After noting what color the wire was for the zone in question, it was just a matter of opening the valve box in the ground outside, and finding the same color wire. That was the bad solenoid.

As luck would have it, I had one on hand, but if not you can visit your Home Center or irrigation supply house for a direct replacement. All it takes then is just connecting the wires and screwing in the new solenoid. Reset the breaker and all is good again.

Don't throw parts at a problem. Diagnose the problem first, then replace only the part or parts that are needed, for an inexpensive, yet effective repair.