Wondering if I can make use of both common wire terminals at once so I can have a run going/coming from front yard and back yard valves. I’d assume yes but as soon as I did I’d find out I was wrong! LOL. Thanks!
What did you wind up doing? I too have two white common wires. There are two areas on the back of the unit that are marked “C”. Did you separate the wires and put one common in each one?
They are a parallel connection so you can use either, or just one, or both. It’s all the same.
I had both white wires plugged into a single C slot and the circuit popped. Do you think separating them will fix the issue
I’m just now learning the intricacies myself but willing to help! Here goes!
The way an irrigation system works is that a common, typically the white wire, is distributed across all valves/zones. A second wire is then added per valve/zone, these are the individually colored wires. So the controller closes the circuit between the common and whatever individual color wire corresponds to the valve/zone. The reason you have two white wires might be because of how the bundle was installed or if you have a master valve etc. Irrigation controller cable usually comes with 8x leads, so looking at your connections there you probably have at least 2x cables. A master valve can be included in front of all the other valves as redundancy and/or safety to turn things off/on.
So there is a chance that during the install one of those two white wires was used for something else. The fact that a breaker pops indicates a short somewhere obviously so maybe one of those white wires is actually doing something else. For example they could have used it as a last zone and jumped the initial white common across all valves, or it could be part of a master valve common.
First in the app I would change your controller system settings to not include a master valve. I would choose one white wire, plug it back in either of the C connections and try the system again. If it works I would go through every zone and verify that each zone you have works. I would try this with both wires and see if either work or not.
If nothing happens you might have an active master valve. So in that case, go back into the app and in the system settings of the controller enable the master valve again. Now pick one of the white wires and repeat the first test, if nothing happens swap the white wires and repeat again.
Whichever way it works, if one of the white wires allows you to run the whole system but you are missing a zone, the second white wire might be that missing zone. If all of your zones come on it might just be a left over wire thats not terminated but somehow shorting the circuit out.
If the breaker keeps popping there could be a larger issue with either the controller or the power supply itself.