Question
Gday. I live in South Australia , Australia. I have a six station Hydro rain pop up sprinkler system which i am unsure of its age. we bought the house 3 years ago and now i would like to fix it  up and get it operational agian for summer. i have had a leaky sprinkler since we got here and have traced it back to a damaged rubber that seals the inlet pipe in the bottom of the solenoid valve. it is a Hydro rain 24 volt 3591126. (red). there where some small rocks stuck to the rubber and they have damaged it. i unscrewed the nut which holds the rubber and turned it over hoping the other side which was not damaged would do the trick and seal it up properly. I manually turned the valve on at the controll box and the valve made a hammering noise and water spurted from the sprinklers in bursts. I unscrewed the bleed valve on top and air and water spurted out but this didn't solve the problem. has changing that rubber over caused it not to open properly? can you buy replacement rubbers or do i need to buy a whole new solenoid valve? can you buy the top half so you dont have to dig the whole lot up?  The whole system runs of a Hydro Rain digital controll box. The display is stuffed and i have no manual book with instructions. can i replace this controll box with something new to suit? . Any recommendations ? thank you very much for your help.

Answer
Hey James, I hope this helps. Yes you can buy just the diaphram (rubber piece) for the valve. You might want to check on the bottom of the valve, where the rubber piece seats on the plastic seat, that this is not cracked or pitted. If the seat is cracked or pitted, then the diaphram will not seal properly, and the valve will continue to leak. If you need a new controller, I would recommend one made by "Irritrol" the model is called a "Rain dial" and you can get it in a 6,9, or 12 station version. It is very easy to install and program. Let me know if I can be of anymore help, thanks and have a great day.