Anyone familiar with Weathermatic valves?

[Merlin74]

Altough your post is old, i have all answer to your questions.

1. The contractor is giving a good service.
2. There is an issue with 2003 and maybe some 2004 solenoids.
3. There is new solenoid that have larger wires so i find them easy to recognize. They seem to perform good.

4. i disagree that weathermatic products are bad. I installed some valves in 1991, 1992, 1993, maybe 1994 and all valves still remain working without any failure. Ok a second time : WEATHERMATIC VALVES ARE WORKING WITHOUT ANY FAILURE FOR 12 TO 15 YEARS.

5. Almost every irrigation companies i know had batch problem one day...

Hope it answer all your questions. I think I've installed about 6000-7000 weathermatic valves plus the same quantity of another brand and tried all major brands.

[amartin725]

How can you tell me that the contractor is giving me good service? He has NOT resolved the issue and has put forth ZERO effort to do so. He's an a$$hole, bottom line. He took my money and screwed.

The solenoids that I DO have are the newer one from Weathermatic that have supposedly been redesigned - they have the larger wires. They are STILL failing on a regular basis.

I never said Weathermatic products are bad, I just can't seem to keep a $3K irrigation system working for more than 2 days without a failure. I understand these systems need maintenance, but this situation is absolutely ridiculous.

[amartin725]

Altough your post is old, i have all answer to your questions.

....

You did not answer any of my questions, nor did you succeed in resolving any of my issues.

[peejmeister]

Back in August of '03, I had a 32-zone sprinkler system installed in my lawn. All Weathermatic valves. My installer has been out at least 15 times in the first two years replacing solenoids as they went bad. After about 10 service calls, he once mentioned that there was a 'bad batch' out there and he was going to replace all the solenoids. I'm not convinced he got them all, or if he did, the ones he replaced them with weren't much (if any) better.

This past weekend I had two more go out on me. One with a 6/04 (may have been 7/04, the arrow was between the 6 and 7) date on it and was all black plastic. The other one (didn't check the date before reinstalling it until I can get it replaced, allowing me to keep the main valve on and running the rest of the system) was black but the sleeve that the plunger rode in was a cream-colored plastic. I also didn't know at the time to note the wire size.

I, too, have only one valve on at a time and use a Hunter ICC controller. Many of my neighbors have the same system but I haven't heard of any of them complaining about solenoids.

What I'm wondering is if there is another brand of solenoid that I can use to replace the Weathermatic ones with so that I might get some extra life out of them. Home Depot sells 'universal' replacement solenoids that fit but don't operate properly. I'm not too hip on spending $12 a pop only to have to replace them again year after year.

[amartin725]

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who has had problems, I wish you good luck with yours. Merlin74 never came back either, not that I am surprised.

I've been extremely busy and finally got the irrigation well back up and running and turned the sprinkler system on for the first time this season only just last week. Before I turned everything on, I went through all of the wiring. It was atrocious. My 4-year old could have done a better job. I trimmed back and reconnected every wire throughout the system and made sure that no connections would ever be under water. I also took an unused wire in the cable and doubled-up on the common throughout the system. I'm not convinced that is will solve anything, but only time will tell.

Al

[hillman90]

Al, try this web site if you have not already:

http://www.sprinklertalk.com/forum/default.asp

there may be some people who can help. I bought a house with an existing system with weathermatic controller and valves and just had 2 solenoids replaced with the 24E's and now one of those zones is only functioning at about 50%.

[jimbo]

Well, this might be a record...not for the most posts on a thread, but for the longest running post!

At this point, with all that has been said, if this were my house, I would have long since ripped everything out and replaced it with an inexpensive timer and Toro valves. Problem solved!

You can only lose so much sleep over your grass!

[amartin725]

....At this point, with all that has been said, if this were my house, I would have long since ripped everything out and replaced it with an inexpensive timer and Toro valves. Problem solved!

I've had that thought more that once, that is for sure.

Had another zone go done the other day with another on it's way out as well. I made another change to the system and think that it is finally resolved. I'll feel better in a week. If it works out, I'll post what I did.

You can only lose so much sleep over your grass!

That is true!!


Had an interesting discovery today. My neighbor's recently moved to a new neighborhood and I stopped in for a visit. They have an irrigation system installed by the same company that did mine. They have the same Weathermatic valves as mine, and the solenoids are the older ones with the smaller wires. They have no problems and the system runs without issue, the difference is that their system has a Weathermatic controller, mine is the Hunter Pro-C.

[brady_h]

I just found this forum and this post in particular. I too have had numerous WM solenoid failures over the past 2 years. So far, I've replaced on my own about 20 of them and changed 6 out of 12 valves out for Orbit brand valves. The Orbit valves so far are hanging tough and have given me 0 problems. The Orbit valves are cheap, so my expectation level was rather low for them. Does anyone know if these are any good?

Also, I have 1 Weathermatic valve that I just changed the solenoid out for one of the newer M24E (Monster) versions and am now having a small problem with. The valve will turn on just fine however it will not turn off without me shutting the water off at the backflow. Is it possible that I installed the Solenoid incorrectly? or maybe have a bad one already? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Brady H.

[brady_h]

Well, I solved my solenoid problem this weekend. Turns out, I cross threaded the new solenoid badly on the new valve and damaged the threads to the point that they would not bite into the valve housing. This was causing the solenoid to blow off the valve each time pressure was applied. I put the old one back in place to temporarily shut the zone down until I can fix the threads or buy yet another new solenoid.

[peejmeister]

Originally Posted by jimbo
At this point, with all that has been said, if this were my house, I would have long since ripped everything out and replaced it with an inexpensive timer and Toro valves. Problem solved!

If I didn't have a 32-valve system in my 1.5 acre lawn, I might have done that myself. Up until recently, my installer had been pretty good about changing out the bad solenoids at no charge. Unfortunately, I haven't seen him back out lately and I now have 3 bad solenoids.

Following an earlier posted link to the WM site, yesterday I entered a Technical Support note on their Contact Us page. Today I recieved a call from WM stating they would have an irrigation company come out and replace ALL of my solenoids at no charge to me. The rep seemed genuinely concerned and wanted to assure me that WM stands behind their products.

I'll continue to post updates as things progress. I was given the name and number of the irrigation company that is to be contacting me shortly.

Originally Posted by amartin725
Had another zone go done the other day with another on it's way out as well. I made another change to the system and think that it is finally resolved. I'll feel better in a week. If it works out, I'll post what I did.

amartin725, let us know what change(s) you made that you think solved your problem, I'm all ears! Incidentally, I have a Hunter ICC controller.

[amartin725]

I have not had a solenoid go down in weeks, and I was having them go at a rate of 1-2 a week. I had one that was failing and was within a day or so of going, and it is still alive. I sent you a PM.

[TGreenway]

I have not had a solenoid go down in weeks, and I was having them go at a rate of 1-2 a week. I had one that was failing and was within a day or so of going, and it is still alive. I sent you a PM.

First, I new to the forum, but the way I found it was via a "google of "weathermatic irrigation valve problem".....so I'm having the same problem as you experienced. I have 9 zones with a Hunter Pro C installed in March 2005, and have had nothing but issues with the valves. Not too bad the first year, I believe I had 3 replaced, but since May 2006, my system has not run more than 2 weeks without a problem (valve issues). Last issues were 4 valves in 3 weeks.

If you have a fix/suggestion I would very much appreciate hearing of it.

Thanks

[amartin725]

I survived the entire season without a single failure. What I did was to plug the 24VAC wall transformer into a Variac and I set the main supply to the Controller to 18VAC while under load (zone running). I had no degradation in any of the solenoids, and 2 that were on their way to failing never did.

The system will actually run down to 10VAC with a zone running, but that isn't enough to get the solenoid going to open the valve. Being an EE, I over-designed a solution. I use the Master Pump Relay output from the Controller to fire a 15 second timer. While time timer is active, the voltage to the system is 24VAC, once the timer times out, the voltage folds back to about 14VAC. During normal operation and standby, the voltage is lower; the voltage only goes up during the first few seconds after a zone turns on. So instead of a huge Variac mounted to the wall in my garage, I have a relay and small auto-transformer. I probably could have gotten away with an 18, 20, or 22VAC wall bug, but that wouldn't have been as much fun to set up

I sent a detailed message to Weathermatic explaining all of my issues, past experiences and learnings. I was basically blown off and told that their valves don't fail. OK, fine by me, but I've had at least 12 of the 'Monster' ones replaced on my system that have failed. What the irrigation company did with them I don't know.

Hope this info helps others.

Al

[TGreenway]

First off, (the good news), is that I really appreciate your reply.

Next, (the bad news), is that I'm not technically capable of doing the fix.

More bad news is that my installer, has stopped returning my calls and/or gone out of business.

I do plan on contacting Weathermatic for some type of assistance... just hoping they can help me out.

Again, thanks for you reply, and I hope your solution continues to work....maybe they'll listen