My master valve is also a zone?! Is this right?

[Chadly]

I think I just discovered the problem as to why zone 3 runs with every other zone: it appears to be the master valve.

Even with the Rachio control panel unplugged from power, when I manually twist the solinoid on any zone the zone will not run unless I have zone 3 manually twisted to the “on” position.

My question is how in the world would I make it so that zone 3 doesn’t run with the other zones? It’s overwatering that area tremendously. Was this an original design mistake? Or, perhaps a part is malfunctioning?

[Chadly]

This problem originally was reported here:

A zone runs with every other zone

I have a zone that also runs with every other zone. I bought the house last year and it had a Hunter Pro C controller and it ranked so I bought my gen2 Rachio controller and installed it myself. Idk if it’s always done this, and It seems like I would’ve noticed this when I installed it because I setup the zones on my Rachio app, taking pictures for each zone, etc. but I just noticed that this was happening last week. I’ve aparrently been waisting a lot of water. Since then I’ve gone one by one r…

After months of stalling, and line detector rental, cleaning out valves, etc. I just discovered that even with the power off the other zones wouldn’t run without my zone3 solenoid being manually turned to the on position.

[Chadly]

I guess temporarily I could manually disable all the sprinkler heads in this zone, right?

[conradh]

I had similar problems. Turned out that the rubber membrane in the valve was to old. After replacing it with a new valve problem solved.

[Chadly]

is a master valve physically and mechanically different from a regular valve?

[Adrian97c]

I am a new user, zone 1 runs for a few seconds each time I run a diff zone… could this be why??