What to do when your lawn sprinkler controller fuses keeps blowing.

Do you have a Rainbird ESP model lawn sprinkler controller that operates your sprinkler system? If so, and your controller is more than 3 years old, you may have experienced this problem before or may be experiencing it now.

Your lawn sprinkler system is working just fine and then when it advances to a certain zone, it automatically pops the 1.5 amp fuse inside the clock and power is lost. You replace the fuse and advance your clock to the zone it was on...And it does it again!

90% of the time this problem is due to a bad solenoid on the electric valve that control's that particular zone. Don't worry, this is an easy fix. Simply cut off your water supply, clip the two wires that the solenoid is attached to and unscrew the solenoid from the top of the valve counter-clockwise.

Now, screw in your replacement solenoid (about $15 for most valves) and reconnect the two low voltage wires that you clipped from the old solenoid and wire them to the wires on your new solenoid.

Many times the most difficult part of this procedure is actually locating your electric valves if you do not know where they are at. Many people let grass grow over the boxes, or plant shrubs nearby which cover or hide the valves. I always encourage homeowners to keep their valve boxes clear and in the open, so that they are easy to find years down the road.

The other 10% of the time this fuse blowing problem is caused from a bad ribbon (the wire bunch that connects the digital fact to the circuit board), a faulty circuit breaker, or even possibly a short in your multi-strand wire. But, more times than not, it is just the solenoid.

Rainbird has since improved the design of the ESP model timers and built an internal fuse which does not blow. The clock senses the bad solenoid or short and automatically skips over this zone until you have fixed the problem and reset the clock. This has saved a lot of headaches for many homeowners and irrigation contractors!