OpenSprinkler Forums Hardware Questions 2-Wire Reply To: 2-Wire

#61474

tmittelstaedt
Participant

There are many 2 wire systems out there. Not for sprinklers. The problem is energy. You cannot shove enough power over a very very very long 24ga wire to actuate a solenoid even at 24v. The people who want 2 wire want to daisy chain them from valve to valve which also means if anywhere the wire is cut it takes all the solenoids after that out of production.

You want to do 2 wire then use 14 or 12ga romes and bury it. You wanna spend $200 on 200 feet of “sprinkler wire” then?

The only way to get around this is raise the voltage. But above 24v requires a licensed electrician to install.

The commercial systems have the same problem. I am sure they use remote power or power extenders (step up step down transformers) to solve this. They probably per code require licensed electricians to install.