New rain sensor for sprinkler system. Replacement by pulling new wire or soldering?

[ajchien]

FWIW, I’ve not worked on sprinkler wiring or rain sensors before, this is a home diy thing.

Got a new Hunter mini rain sensor, since the old one has been around for about 20 years, plastic housing cracked, and some green crusty corrosion is seen on the wire attachments.

The wire for the rain sensor runs into a 3/4” pvc conduit and shares the conduit with the control wires that go to the sprinkler valves. I’d guess the conduit length to be around 12 feet, but with different passages as the sprinkler valve wires go in a different location than where the rain sensor goes. There are going to be 4 or 5 turns in the conduit along the way. The wire does seems to hang up on something in the conduit, with some preliminary tugging.

So ... my dilemma is to 1) pull out the old wiring while pulling in the new wiring through the conduit. Or 2) solder in the rain sensor, keeping the existing wiring in place.

My worries about pulling wire through the conduit is that I’ll wind up pulling along some of the existing sprinkler valve wiring and rub through insulation or even break wires. They look pretty small gauge. Is there a better / right / proper way to do this?

 

[Busted Knucles]

2) solder in the rain sensor, keeping the existing wiring in place

 

[jdm5]

definitely 2, but not even sure you need solder (?) - just use an outdoor wire nut.

 

[ajchien]

Thanks guys, simplicity wins. I used those grease filled “waterproof” wire nuts. Plenty of wire left in case someone vehemently objects and thinks that’s wrong. Worst case scenario is that the continuity is lost, and the sprinklers shut off ... which you would figure I would eventually notice if the grass turns yellow.