The Tool . . .

I written before that sprinkler systems are constant work.  A while back one of the sprinkler circuits routes ceased to operate.  I fiddled with it and still could not get it to work.  So I called a sprinkler guy and he turned out to be retired USAF Sargent.  And he did a bit off fiddling around and he found a broken wire from the sprinkler control unit going down to where are the wires were congregated just outside of the garage.  We ran a new wire from the control box to this location and he figured it out the correct wire connection and got the sprinkler working again.

That was about seven years ago.  And sure enough that same circuit went dead.  I looked and looked for the old connection and could not find it.  Many a night I would go to sleep trying to figure out how I could fix the problem.

In the mean time one of the units in the control box went bad and I had to replace it.  That was easy enough to do but I still had this one bad circuit.  That set of sprinklers were on the south side of the house and partly into the front yard.  The frequent rains, storms, etc. kept the area green but it has turned hot and dry.  And the grass was dying.

So back at it again.  Then I had an idea, why not use a jumper wire from the known good connection and then I could try the various wiring connections in the control junction box.  I would go to the main control box and select that station, number 7, so I knew it had power and then I connected the jumper to the end of that wire and then started test other connections.  On the second test using the jumper  cable and the sprinkler fired up.  I had finally located the correct set of wires in junction box.  After that it was just a matter of connecting wires together.

The tool is the jumper wire with alligator clips on each end.  I had not used it in years and had to go hunting for it.  I recalled after while that it was in my little tool kit I used on computers.  It had connectors, various screw drivers, a device to pull a computer chip out of its socket in that kit.  I had stashed the jumper in that tool kit.  I was elated when I found it and quickly put it to work and found the correct connections in short order.

That kind tool is home made.  One those things one creates to do something way back when.  I do not recall why I made it but boy it solved the problem quickly for me.  I ponder how to correct that problem for months and now know what to do.  Jumpers are not new, and of course, on a computer board there used to be various jumpers you had to use.  Those were simple little plug devices to connected two pins.    Nobody uses pin junction any more and I have a tube of hardware in the computer tool kit with screws, jumpers and "y" connectors to enable more than one hard drive to get power and so on.   Once in a great while one needs a jumper cable and that is why it is in the kit.