Sprinkler Valve How Does it Work?

Valves are an essential piece of any sprinkler system, but it’s easy to forget how useful they are since they’re completely out of sight. Sure, sprinkler heads are responsible for the actual irrigation and spread of water on your lawn to keep it green and lush, and it is still important for you to take care of, put attention towards, and maintain the optimal condition of your sprinkler heads.

But if it weren’t for the sprinkler valves, you wouldn’t even have water pumping through your pipes in the first place. The maintenance of your sprinkler valves, and ensuring that they operate at peak functionality, is crucial to the maintenance and irrigation of your lawn.

Benefits of Understanding the Sprinkler Valve

It may feel as though having to learn about how sprinkler valves work is another hassle on top of the numerous things that a homeowner has to be knowledgeable of, but knowing this is detrimental to the health of your lawn.

If you’re unaware of the way sprinkler valves work and how each part operates, then breakages in your valves may become far more dangerous and more expensive for you. If you are at least aware of the slightest gist of how the sprinkler valve operates, then it will help you in knowing how to take the right steps and how to avoid further damaging your valves.

Worst case scenario, you can even be completely oblivious to damages and breakages and leave your sprinkler valve unattained, incurring further damage over time. If the damage has gone too far, you can end up having to buy an entirely new sprinkler valve rather than just specific parts. This is how you end up spending way too much money than you should have if you had only been properly prepared.

The Parts of a Sprinkler Valve

In order for you to get to know how it works, let’s introduce to you the parts that make up the sprinkler valve:

Solenoid

Plunger

Port

Closing mechanism

Everything about the sprinkler valve depends on two things: water pressure, and electric current. Pulses of electric power run through the solenoid by the timer, which in turn lifts and/or lowers the plunger. Moving the plunger upward allows the water to rush in the port into the chamber, and consequently moving the plunger downward stops the flow.

This opening and closing of the port into the chamber is crucial for maintaining and controlling the water pressure inside the valve, which flows through the port and pushes the diaphragm (the closing mechanism) up.

When the solenoid is de-energized, meaning no electrical current is running through it, then the plunger is moved down to plug the port. Water thus stops flowing through the chamber above the diaphragm, forcing it to close the valve and stop the flow of water to the sprinklers entirely.

This is how the intricate system of a sprinkler valve works. Now, when you’re in front of a problem in need of a solution, all you’ll need to do is to troubleshoot what went wrong based on the parts that you know and you’ll at least have a good idea of what to do next.