# Irrigation Wire Types?



## Bonkdlab (Apr 20, 2020)

My house was built in 1998, and I think the irrigation system was put in then. Controller outside, 9 zones, with the valves in individual boxes around the yard. My question is this: the controller has a multi-strand wire, but the valves have direct-burial wires running to them. Does this mean the multi strand wire is connected to the direct burial wire underground? Would that be in some sort of junction box?


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## quadmasta (Apr 3, 2019)

If it's like mine then they probably ran the multi-strand wire to the master/zone 1 valve, connected it there and then ran from that zone to the next. On my system after the first zone they just used a bunch of individual wires instead of multi-conductor.


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## jht3 (Jul 27, 2018)

Hopefully the multi to solid conductor splices is in one of your zone boxes, probably zone 1?


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## Bonkdlab (Apr 20, 2020)

Nope. All the valve boxes have the same red/white wires.


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## arrigetch peaks (Mar 27, 2019)

I'm assuming this is all low voltage 12v-24v not 120v. When you say multi-strand do you mean one cable with several conductors (wires) in it? Code, normal installation, knowing what you are doing, one would install a j-box when making a splice. Are you having problems?


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## Bonkdlab (Apr 20, 2020)

By multi strand, i mean several color-coded wires wrapped in a sleeve. I'm not having any problems- I'm just looking to learn more!


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## jht3 (Jul 27, 2018)

When you said multi strand I thought you meant something like speaker wire. Irrigation typically uses solid copper, with multiple colored wires inside an outer jacket.

Since that is not what you are finding in each box, there is splicing going on somewhere. Hopefully they used waterproof direct burial splices.

I have that at a few boxes. At one they even changed the color on me, that was a real head scratcher! At the others I have more like you but black and red. The reason is the original wires were cut, probably accidently with a shovel and repaired. The splices are either in the box or nearby.


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## arrigetch peaks (Mar 27, 2019)

I would ohm out the wires. That would suck if they installed direct burial splices and used different conductors than the original wires. Well, that could happen if that is the wire they had with them at the time of the splicing.

Do all the valves have the same direct burial wire (I'm picturing type UF wire)? At the zone controller do you have only multi-strand wire (I'm picturing 16-2 solid)?


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