relay

[spete112]

Does anyone know how to make or where to purchase a relay that would allow be to open more than one control valve at the same time. I think I can save money by not having my main line have pressure on at all the time. I would like to use poly 80 the same as my laterals. The problem that I have is I am going from one lawn area to the other lawn area 170 feet, where I have my other zone valves. I would like to get away using the cheaper pipe by not having pressure on it when the system is not in use. The issue that I will have is I will need to operate two zone valves at the same time and when it comes to the drip line I may need to operate three valves. I don’t see why I should not be able to accomplice this with a relay. The only problem is my electrical expertise do not go very far when it comes to relays?

Thanks for your help

 

[speedbump]

What do you use now to turn the valves on/off? Do you have a sprinkler timer with zones, or are you just turning them on/off manually?

Where are you getting the 24 volts now to operate the valves?

 

[spete112]

Thanks so much for your reply. Right now I do not have anything I have a design that was down by Rain Bird and was just thinking how I could get away from having so much pipe with preasure on it 100% of the time. Right now they have everything design with a control box. I just wanted to know how I can open two to three valves at the same time knowig that I can't have them all hooked up to the control box. The only thing that I would also like to acomplish by this same problem is that I want to have a drip line set up on both side of the house for some flowers. There is no reason that I can not water thoes on the same time. However that would require three valves to be opened at the same time.

 

[speedbump]

A simple relay would do the trick. You can trigger it with 24 volts from a transformer, the relay would then send 24 volts to each valve which would open them. Or, if your valves are the kind that can be opened manually, you could leave them open and control all zones with one main valve which would then feed all the other valves.

Not knowing how your system is configured, I can't tell you how to accomplish this. If you can make up a drawing, I could probably work from that.