Have you lost the display on your control box? Have your sprinklers stopped coming on? Or is your controller just old and difficult to operate?
We can help you.
Call 0400044236 or email here to make an appointment for Andrew to come and replace your old controller with one that works well. Or you can search through the archives of information on this site to try and find a solution for yourself.
This week I went to a property where there were 5 retic stations wired up, but only station 3 would come on.
As with all these problems it is important to begin at the controller and follow wiring and piping from there. I put the controller on station 1 and tested for voltage. There were no volts coming from terminal 1, but one station was definitely on as I was getting wet.
I did the same for station 2 – no volts, but the same station was stuck on.
Station 3 had volts and water from the same sprinklers
Station 4 & 5 had the same watering pattern but no volts.
My conclusion was that something had gone awry in the control box and it wasn’t sending power to the other stations to enable them to open. For some reason it was only powering up station 3.
So I switched the boxes over, ran a test and all was good as new.
Had we begun by chasing solenoids we would have spent a lot of time and gained nothing as the problem was located in the controller itself.
If your Holman 469 isn’t working then one of the first things to check for is whether the display says ‘rain sensor dry’ or ‘rain sensor wet’.
If it is ‘dry’ then you have 24v power supply. If it says ‘wet’ then you have lost power. It may be that a fuse has blown or it could be that one of your RCDs has tripped.
Either way the ‘rain sensor wet’ message is the sign that things won’t work.
If a fuse has blown then the next step is to find out why. Chances are you have a dodgy solenoid coil that is causing the fuse to blow and it will need to be replaced before things will be properly fixed.
If you wish to hardwire a new retic control box then you need a sparky. There’s no way around that.
The sparky will cut into your main electricity supply and connect the control box to one of the existing circuits. Often the control box will be placed next to the meter box simply because of the convenience of the electrical supply right there.
A good sparky will then run the reticulation cable down the wall cavity and into the ground via flexible conduit. If this can’t be done due to blockage in the wall then it may be necessary to use a conduit to hold the wires.
Either way it isn’t a DIY job.
If you have a powerpoint handy then it is much easier to DIY. So long as you know what you are doing you can simply plug in and drill some holes to get it mounted, then either drop cable down the wall cavity or run it in a conduit.
If you need a hand then be sure to give us a call
I haven’t had cause to use one of these controllers before, but today I needed to check one out for replacement.
It is a DC controller powered by two nine volt batteries and uses the tap as its water source. I guess its a reasonable solution if you want to do some DIY, but I would prefer to run things from the water and elec main.
They aren’t cheap either. I got a price on a replacement unit and it was not far off the price of a regular control box and a bunch of solenoids.
If you have set your retic to come on automatically but find that it doesn’t switch off then chances are you have set it incorrectly.
The most common cause of this issue is setting an identical start time for each station.
When you set your retic you generally only need one start time to get it rolling. Let’s assume that is 6.00am. Set start no 1 to 6.00 am and do not set any more start times!
What I have seen people do is set several start times (all 6.00am) and this seems to confuse the old retic box… If you have 3 stations or 10 stations you only need one start time, so if you are having this problem first check and see if you have set a number of start times all for the same time.
If you have a Hunter X Core Controller and it doesn’t come on as it should when operating manually the you could have a dodgy switch issue.
Normally to run an individual station you turn the dial anti-clockwise to the ‘run single station’ indicator, then select the station an return the dial to auto-run.
If it doesn’t come on (and you will know its on by the presence of a little sprinkler symbol) then you may need to jiggle the switch a bit and see if you can get it to fire up.
Usually if this is a problem then the dial will not move between the various modes easily. Unfortunately the only solution is to get anew control box as the dial and switches are a complete unit
We hope you had a great Christmas and New Year break.
We are back on deck and taking bookings again, so just give us a call and hopefully we will be able to help you with your retic controller problems!
I’ve noticed a few X Cores have a sticky switch problem.
When trying to run the controller manually you turn the dial anti-clockwise and choose the station you want. Then you return it to the auto-run position.
If it doesn’t come on you may need to jiggle the dial a little to get it to fire up. I have noticed this problem on a few control boxes. I don’t think it affects the automatic functioning, but it is a nuisance when running it manually.
I managed to get a hold of one of these babies for home the other day. On a quarter acre block it’s a bit of a pain running back and forth to test the stations so a remote comes in handy – and its even better when you need to change a nozzle.
Now its no longer a case of unscrew, flush, test while running back to the control box each time. Now you can operate the controller while standing next to the sprinkler. Much easier!
The remote allows you to operate your stations for a run time that you choose. Its really simple to install and use.
For some reason my first attempt at installation resulted in some bizarre error messages and strange behaviour by the system. The controller worked fine without the remote attached, however when I wired it up I discovered that 3 stations were coming on at once. There was power (23v) coming from pump, the actual terminal in use and two others.
It was a mysterious problem and I thought the controller was at fault, but I disconnected the remote wires and reconnected… and then all worked fine. I’m not sure what the issue was but its sorted now.
At the start of the year we got a great buzz from winning the Holman competition and scored a free trip to Sydney to the cricket.
Well it happened again.
A couple of months back Hunter industries launched a promotion open to all retic contractors who completed their 10 modules of online training.
Well… a couple of nights in front of the computer paid off and Brighton reticulation won the $1000.00 in Coles/Myer gift vouchers.
We picked them up last week and tomorrow they get spent on 4 new tyres for the Patrol
Thanks to Hunter for the prize!