Irritrol R811-24VACG Replacement Solenoid

I have old Rain Bird valves on my irrigation system which has a different solenoid than the new versions and I couldn't find any old style anywhere. Thanks to a comment in another review, I was able to utilize this solenoid on my valves. As the other review stated, you have to use a knife to cut off the white plastic at the end which retains the solenoid core then it works fine for the Rain Bird. Worked so good, I bought two more to replace all the solenoids while I could get them. Saved me from having to dig up my entire valve box and re-plumb everything.

Faulty wire connection on top of solenoid was causing zone to be skipped or shortened. I could reposition the wire and it would work for a while, but would eventually fail again. Found this replacement solenoid and it fixed the problem. Very easy to replace and it is an exact match for Irritrol 2713APR valve solenoid.

I saw reviews that indicated that the valve doesn't close for some older valves with this solenoid. Sure enough, mine has that problem! Several reviews indicated that they fixed the problem by removing the white plastic spacer. The engineer in me told me that part has a role in this design and should not simply be removed. Irritrol didn't simply have some extra white plastic and concluded they could get rid of it here! I removed the white plastic part from the old solenoid and compared it to the new plastic piece. See attached photos. The new white plastic part is noticeably taller. The height difference appears to be entirely in the lower section of the white part. I used a flat file to evenly remove material from the back side of the white plastic (lower section) until the old and new parts were roughly the same height. The overall height of the modified white part is about 5.6mm. The height of the bottom section after modification is about 3.3mm It seems to work fine and all parts are present!

This Solenoid fit my Irritrol 250T sprinkler valve and works flawlessly. It's only been a few days, but only time will tell on craftsmanship. We got 20 years out of the original and hope for at least close to that with this one.

My sprinkler system uses 35 year old Rain Bird valves. These have been ultra reliable, but the solenoids have now disintegrated. They don't sell replacement parts anymore (bad Rain Bird). Modern Rain Bird solenoids don't fit. This solenoid worked in my system. For it to work, I had to cut off the white plastic that protrudes from the bottom of the solenoid, and remove the o-ring left over from the Rain Bird solenoid. Then, it was just a matter of screwing the solenoid in and attaching the wires. This easy repair saved me from having to dig up my valves and do a gigantic plumbing project. Amazing!

Easy to install and saved me a bunch. I did some trouble shooting myself since the sprinkler service company wanted $150 just to troubleshoot and then the same plus parts to fix. Very easy to change out since it just unscrews and two wires. So easy a Cave man can do it! Just don't forget to turn off the water to the system or you are going to get wet.

Ordered this solenoid because it was the correct part number for an older solenoid that had gone bad on a fairly old valve. Popped the new one on and once I turned the water on the zone wouldn’t close even after turning it off on the controller. Turns out the white plastic piece on the solenoid would not allow the metal cylinder to drop low enough to close the valve. I removed the plastic piece and no issues. I saw someone wrote this in another review and thought I’d reiterate it to save any aggravation to anyone else. If your valve is older you may have to do this.

Normally sprinkler repair is a pain. Everybody knows it. This time I had a zone that didn't come on. After swapping things around in the box, I determined I needed a new solenoid. I ordered and an hour after it arrived in started the replacement. Not 5 minutes later the zone was working. Woo Hoo. Easiest repair ever. Usually, it's a days long ordeal.