How do I find my solenoid valves? What’s a Solenoid look like?
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It’s common in Perth for reticulation system installations to have valves buried in either random places, or in one place if you are lucky, but often are completely buried with no map plan where they are!
Crazy.
Here’s some advice to locate your own solenoids before spending money.
1. Look near where your water mains meter is in line with the controller. Sometimes there will be a round or square plastic green lid. A large rectangle one will likely be a manifold of valves or if it has a bolt on one end it may just be a bore box. If it’s a bore though you can follow the direction of the piping which will go to solenoids 95% of the time.
2. Hire a Solenoid Valve Detector / Wire Tracer from somewhere in Perth. The problem here is, first you have to go pick it up and then they take a lot of time to get good at using. So by the time you found a valve, you may have hired it for days and spent more money and time than you wished. Or a cheap option is go to Bunnings Warehouse and get a cheap “chatter box”which turns the valve on and off really fast so you can hear a clicking underground. These don’t work if there’s a broken wire or if the solenoid coil is faulty. Solenoid valves are hard to find with these unless they are shallow and functioning correctly. From experience, you are likely to waste $40
4. Can I Hire a metal detector to find solenoid valves? No. They don’t detect them well as they are mostly made of plastic and usually too deep.
5. Call the Property Care Guys. We SPECIALISE in locating retic valves.
95% of the time we will find and fix your lost solenoid valve or in ground cable break / broken wire at roughly $200-$350. So there’s your cheapest and reliable option in general 🙂 If we don’t find the problem mentioned in this page we will give you a free quote for further works required.
