# How to find valves?



## Ewc88 (Apr 3, 2019)

House I live in, prior owners had a irrigation system put it. Covers well, eventually will redo some things but all was working fine for all 9 zones, then all of a sudden zone 3 does not want to work. Now my problem is my valves are in ground and out of 9 I can only locate 4, and guess which one I can't find...

So how does one go about finding a valve that's in ground and under grass?


----------



## kalcormier (May 9, 2021)

Thats a good question. Metal detector maybe?


----------



## Trailz516 (Aug 11, 2019)

Finding burried valves can be very difficult. I use a "toner" that sends 24v through alligator clips that you would connect to the common wire and the wire corresponding to the missing zone and with the wand that picks up that 24v. Tone the wire from the clock and that should lead you to the burried valve. I use a Greenlee 501 but they are rather expensive.


----------



## spaceman_spiff (Feb 5, 2021)

Yeah, a tone and probe kit (and shovel) would probably work. Decent ones are like ~$100ish though.


----------



## UltimateLawn (Sep 25, 2020)

I tried one of the lower cost tone options and did not find success. In the end I called an irrigation company to find them with their better equipment. Afterwards I noted exactly where they were to not have the same issue again.


----------



## massgrass (Aug 17, 2017)

I had a general idea where a missing one was and my FIL was able to find it with his metal detector.


----------



## RowdyBrad (Jun 10, 2021)

I found mine by having to dig up saturated clay from a pipe break. Turned out they buried anti siphon and valve manifolds along with main ball valve under 3 feet of thick clay. Lucky it broke the pipe and we were able to find it easily enough I guess.

Always had sprinklers and controls, but was never able to find the valves until last weekend lol.


----------



## Hoosier (Jun 12, 2018)

I located mine recently, as I am planning to reconfigure the system once I get the time to do so. I knew where my first valve was, so here's what I did:

1) Buy this https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GDZLZOU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
2) Go to the first valve and remove the wire connector for the common wire (If you don't know where the first one is, you can hook it up to the common going into the controller, but need to find something metal to clip your ground connector to)
3) Look in the valve box to find the wires that are going away from the controller (to the next valve), and clip the red end to that exposed common wire, clip the black end to the metal on a screwdriver, and stick it into the ground
4) Using the probe, swing it back and forth as you trace the signal to the next valve. Have another screwdriver with you to poke around for the plastic valve box cover.
5) Once you find the next valve, repeat

That Amazon locator is not perfect, but this method worked for me, with some patience and trial and error. I think the further the distance, the worse it performs, which is why I connected the transmitter to the common at each valve instead of hooking it up to the common wire at the controller and tracing the signal from there.

You could also follow this same process using the colored wires for the different zone, if you're getting a signal with the common wire, but still aren't finding the valve boxes. In that case, you would use the wire for the specific zone you're trying to locate, follow the signal, and once you lose the signal, start poking around there for the valve box.

In my case (6 zones), I had a valve for zone 1, another for zone 2, and the rest of the valves were all in 1 box, so I got lucky in only having to locate a couple instead of all 6.

For $45 for the transmitter and another hour or two of work, dependent on your system setup, may or may not be worth paying an irrigation company to do this for you, I assume it would be in the $100-150 range for them, basically an hour of labor.

Home Depot also rents much better locators, if you did decide you wanted to do it yourself, but aren't having much luck with the cheapo one.


----------



## ag_fishing (Feb 3, 2021)

I had a general idea with mine and was in the same position. I ended up taking a straight line between the valve boxes that I had found, got a pitchfork, and started poking the ground until I found them all. I looked pretty dumb, but it worked


----------



## Oyster Shark (Aug 24, 2020)

Go to a land scape supply store. You can rent a sprinkler valve locator. I paid $35 for the day. I was able to locate all ten solenoid valves on an acre of property is less than an hour. Metal detectors wont work and trying to use a toner is a waste of time.


----------

