Hi, if you've ever wondered how to wire up one of those solenoid valves to an irrigation controller,
well, that is exactly what we'll be showing you today.
Hi and welcome to Three Minute Thursdays. I'm Matt, and we're starting a brand new video series
to show clever gardening ideas, DIY tips and skills and how you get started in your garden.
To start off we'll be showing you how to wire up a solenoid valve to an irrigation controller.
A Solenoid Valve is essentially an automatic tap, using a magnet within the Solenoid Coil
The valve and be turned on or off remotely by an irrigation controller
In this video, we will be demonstrating how to wire a K-Rain Solenoid Valve into the new WX8 Wi-Fi Irrigation Controller
including a Master Valve.
A Master Valve works like a backup valve, when the irrigation controller
signals to the solenoid valve to open, it also opens the Master Valve at the same time.
When no valves are operating the master valve will shut off all watering to your irrigation system.
By shutting off the master valve the system's pipework is not under pressure.
At Holman, we range manifolds just like these. They come in 2, 3 and 4 way configurations.
This very simple product eliminates the need for extra products such as tees or elbows.
You would screw the master valve at the end, just like that.
and then attach the solenoid valves that are there to active your stations.
in the individual sides here.
Making sure you have the master valve the right way around, the K-Rain Master Valve has little
arrows which indicate which way the water should run through the solenoid.
Now take your solenoid valve and connect it to the rest of the manifold.
Use a little nipple to connect it to the solenoid. Use tape to reduce any leakage around it
and let's screw it in.
Just hand tightening it will do, don't over tighten and make sure again that you look at the arrows
to follow the water flow direction.
Once connected to the manifold, separate the cables on your solenoid.
And you will see that there is two cables coming out of the solenoid.
Pick one to be your common cable and pick the other one to be the active cable.
Open your WX8 Irrigation Controller box
Take the bottom panel out and you will see where the cables will have to go.
Take the active wire from the master valve
Unscrew the little screw on the terminal that's marked M
Feed-in the active cable and hand tighten the screw.
Other brands of controllers might call that P or S on the terminal block.
Now take your common wire from the master valve and the common cable from your solenoid valve
and twist them together.
Undo the screw on the irrigation controller that's marked C
put in the wire and hand tighten the screw.
Now there should be one cable left on your solenoid valve, that's your active cable.
This will determine whichever station you would like to designate to your solenoid valve
Now, if you want your solenoid valve to active station one
you would connect the active cable to station one on your controller.
It is marked 1on your terminal block
If you want that solenoid to be station two, you would connect it to station 2 on the controller, 3, 4 and so on.
To test that everything is wired up correctly make sure that your controller is plugged into a powerpoint and runs power.
You actually see that by the illuminated LED's on the controller box.
You then want to turn the dial to station one and press START. Your solenoids should
be making a humming sound.
There you have it guys, you've successfully wired up your controller to your solenoid valves.
In the next video, we'll be talking about the WX8 Wi-Fi Controller
how to set it up with a phone and all the cool functions that come with it.
Thanks for watching, don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you smart gardeners in the next video.
*muffled struggling*