How to adjust zones on controller

Hello all,

New to home owning and house came with a nice 12 zone sprinkler system, compete with leaks, mixed zones (front and back on same zone) and well water in the rear and city up front. I was able to get someone in to help me with putting the front on the well. However I have called and called and called.... to get the person back out to help me straighten out the zones, but no response. Must be extremely busy. Issue I am having is that the back yard is shot and I am putting a drainage/drywell system in it and would like to turn off the sprinklers for now. Unfortunately I had to redo the front yard and have the sprinklers working for that. So to the problem:

I have done some googleing and could not find a good discussion on how to adjust/consolidate zones. Is there any advice anyone here could provide? I have a 12 zone system, will have to check make, but seems to run well. Noticed 2 green panels in the front yard and the back yard for the system. I know how to shut off the system and adjust the heads, but no clue how to adjust zones. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Normally you would just program those zones which you want to go on using your control box.

If your zones are overlapping into areas you don't want watered, then that's a different problem. You need to cap off the line at a point that allows some heads to work and others to remain in the ground. Another approach is to remove the sprinkler heads you don't want to go on, and replace them with a cap. Some spray nozzles have a screw on top that you can screw down all the way to turn them off.

If you want to permanently "adjust" the zones so they make more logical sense, you need to do a lot more work. You may have to re-route waterlines and add another zone valve or two.

Thank you for the response. It is making the zones into more logically arranged zones that I am looking to fix. What I am curious about is rerouting the water lines. As I mentioned above I have two panels next to each other in the ground in the front and back which relate to the sprinkler system. I think that is where the control for the zones and the hoses to the heads actually meet? Is this where I would need to get into rerouting the zones? I imagined this would not be easy, but if anyone has any knowledge on the topic they can offer I would really appreciate it. I dont mind digging up the lines to reroute if that is what I have to do.

If you have a map or blueprint of your irrigation system, that would be enormously helpful in determining how to modify your system. If you don't have one, then you should create one.

Start at the vacuum breaker and include the main line as well as the smaller feed lines, zone valves, and each individual sprinkler head.

Once you understand how everything is laid out, you can draw up plans for changing it and determine what kind of equipment and labor is involved.

Thats helpful. Would the vacum breaker be the panel I have sitting in the front and back yard? is that where the hoses for each zone attach?

If so that is what partially confuses me. How I would have zones for the front and back going at the same time.

Vacuum Breaker

Thats helpful. Would the vacum breaker be the panel I have sitting in the front and back yard? is that where the hoses for each zone attach?
If so that is what partially confuses me. How I would have zones for the front and back going at the same time.

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Your Pressure Vacuum Breaker (PVB) should be located at the beginning of your system and is usually pretty near your water meter or your well house. (See attached image).

You'll need to post a picture of the "panel" you are referring to. You may have two zones going at the same time, and all you need to do is shut one of them off.

I will take some pictures this weekend and try to show what I am looking at. If these zones are mixed would I literally need to dig up the lines to move from one vacum breaker to another or is it a matter of adjusting them within the panel and reprogramming the zones with the control station.

I will post some pics this weekend so that i can show what I am looking at. Again thanks for the help.

You should only have one vacuum breaker--at the beginning of your system.
You also need one zone valve for each zone. I don't really know what kind of panel you are talking about, but, as I mentioned before, it is not a minor project to break up zones.

zones

Normally the way you make zones logical is to move the wires in the panel and connect them in the order you want the sections to water. You also set each zone for the amount of time it should run. This is not rocket science. If you do not want something to water you program it for zero minutes, shut the valve down if it has a manual knob, or remove its wire from the controller, If you want to shut down the whole area. turn the controller to off or remove the "common" wire if there is more than one area being controlled and they have separate common wires, (which would be normal if one is in front and the other is in the rear).

hj said:

Normally the way you make zones logical is to move the wires in the panel and connect them in the order you want the sections to water. You also set each zone for the amount of time it should run. This is not rocket science. If you do not want something to water you program it for zero minutes, shut the valve down if it has a manual knob, or remove its wire from the controller, If you want to shut down the whole area. turn the controller to off or remove the "common" wire if there is more than one area being controlled and they have separate common wires, (which would be normal if one is in front and the other is in the rear).

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So if i understand you correctly is I would go into the green lid panels in the front and back yard and move wires around to get the front and back onto logical zones and not mixed between the two? or is this done in the control panel itself.

I found the front and rear shut off valves shown above. Not sure whether part of the back is being feed off the front valve.

New to home owning and house came with a nice 12 zone sprinkler system, compete with leaks, mixed zones (front and back on same zone)

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What HJ has suggested will not work if one zone valve operates sprinkler heads in the front and in the back. You will have to split up that zone.

Best way to check is to manually shut off all zone valves and then open them up one at a time to see what heads pop up.