Friday 14 August 2015

Irrigation control cable fault finding update

Since the last post when I mentioned that we had a fault in the control cable we started to go through the entire irrigation system to track down any problems before we need to fire up the system in spring. This has now turned into a major hunt for damage to the control cable as at one point the system had totally shut down. For the last 4 weeks we have constantly been fault finding the system and as the golfers would have noticed we have had to dig holes all over the course locating possible bad joins, damaged cable and faulty decoders.

Faulty decoder

Cable that appears to be stretched  under a pipe with fused sand around the exposed wire



Vertidrain damage to shallow cable

More damaged cable

Cracks in the cable insulation


Two cables shorted together

Two more cables shorted together

Over the course of  the last 4 weeks we have replaced 3 faulty or shorted decoders, replaced dozens of  faulty joiners, cut out about 12 areas of damaged cable and have been continually tracing and testing cable over the entire course. At the moment we still don't have a functioning irrigation system despite all our efforts. We have had advice and help from the local Rainbird technician and  he is coming in on Tuesday for the day to see if he can get to the bottom of our problems. The issues we are having appear to be a combination of  the age of the components in the system (25 years or older), the fact that we have had massive ground upheaval with over 15,000 earthquakes and aftershocks and in some instances poor installation practises.
At this point I'm not discounting damage to the irrigation control unit as one of the sources of the problems so hopefully we can get this tested Tuesday when the technician visits.