Sprinkler system rehab

One great thing about having pre-teen grandsons living close to us is that they have been willing and able to mow our lawns.  And they do a fair job of it although Jake's method of mowing is akin to a Kreepy Krawler pool sweep or a Roomba vacuum cleaner: totally random pathways. Unfortunately, they haven't yet learned to recognize a sprinkler head or distinguish it from a blade of grass.  So, we have had to do more sprinkler maintenance as a cost of having our lawns mowed.

The other day I volunteered to help Carolyn repair the system.  I would turn the sprinklers on and off and she could fix the heads we determined had a problem.  She directed me to the manifold where one can manually turn a knob to turn a particular branch on or off.  I explained that I could do it even easier and stay drier with the sprinkler system timer but then we'd have to yell louder or use our phones because the timer is in the back of the garage.

The next day, I wanted to check out the system and set the sprinkler times so I had to use the timer.Turns out, I couldn't use the timer.  I pressed the manual override so the first branch should go on.  Nothing.  Well, not nothing, the LCD display said "No power".  Now how, I asked myself, did a timer with electronic display have the nerve to say "No power"?  Carolyn had said something about turning our fountain off but that doesn't turn off the timer.  I thought.  It didn't take me long to determine the outlet was dead and the timer display runs off a battery.

Two other outlets in the garage were dead including one for our microwave oven and the circuit for our driveway lantern.  The light went on (so to speak).  A GFI (ground fault interrupt) had tripped a safety switch and cut the circuit.  Resetting the GFI switch turned on our lantern, the microwave, and the sprinkler timer.  I tested out the sprinklers without getting wet and all is happy again.  Except we still don't know what caused the GFI in the first place.  And, of course, we've had rain almost every day since repairing the sprinkler system so it really doesn't matter if it works or not.