In this example, I have taken a Rainbird 100DVFUU Union sprinkler valve and disassembled it so that you could see the parts and become familiar with them. I will list each part and give a short description.
- Solenoid – The solenoid takes power from the timer and opens the valve. When the power from the timer stops, or another way to put it is when your station quits watering, the solenoid shut the valve off. The solenoid can be twisted counter clockwise to open the sprinkler valve.
- Valve Top – The valve top is simply the top half of the valve. On this valve the flow control and manual bleed screw are located on the top half of the valve.
- Valve Bottom – Contains the inlet and outlet fittings of the valve. They can be glue fitting (SXS), threaded fittings(TXT), or union fittings as pictured here. The water flows through the bottom half of the valve.
- The manual bleed screw can be twisted counter clockwise to open the valve.
- The flow control can be adjusted up or down to control the flow of water to the sprinkler zone. Turning the flow control clockwise reduces the flow to the sprinkler zone.
- Diaphragm – The diaphragm fits between the top and bottom half of the sprinkler valve. The diaphragm is involved with the opening and closing of the sprinkler valve, but I won’t go into any more detail here.
- Inlet Union – The inlet union on this valve attaches to the manifold. On this side of the valve water is under constant pressure.
- Outlet Union – The outlet union on this sprinkler valve is only under pressure when the sprinkler zone is watering.
- Water Flow – The water flow on the sprinkler valve always goes from the inlet to the outlet. Most valves have a flow arrow on the valve showing the direction of water travel, but if they don’t the solenoid is always on the downstream side of the valve.
I have a number of YouTube videos that deal with valve repair and troubleshooting. To view these videos, visit my channel at iScaper1.