On Monday I (Matt) repaired Reticulation in Wanneroo, North of Perth
A couple needed their irrigation system fixed ASAP to get their home on the market. They reported 2 or maybe up to 3 valves were not working. This is quite rare because usually one station stops, gets fixed, another one fails next year, gets fixed etc but this grid was just run into the ground (no pun intended lol) Almost nothing was being watered at all.
I tried each station and 4 out of 6 valves appeared to not be working at all although 24v power was getting to them just fine. They were ancient looking so thought OK I will replace those 4 then and then do another manual system test. Every valve then worked perfectly and surprisingly every sprinkler was even spraying just righ on the whole property. Classic case of total solenoid valve failure ignored!
Pic shows the rear station which had been repaired by different people over the years. The middle one is raised – an oldschool way of replacing a valve without removing much pipe or using a compression fitting or slip fixing it. I replaced the outer two. The left one having a slip-fix. We don’t charge for these.
I spoke to the customer (Shane) a couple of days later.. “I spent all day trying to find those” (solenoid valves) I said I could have detected them in a short time without digging up the whole garden.. he wished he had known that earlier! haha
