Sprinkler Controller Error Codes, Every Brand

Every manufacturer publishes its codes in its own silo, in its own words, and never tells you what the equivalent code is called on another brand. So a homeowner standing in the garage with P Err on the screen has to already know it is a Hunter code before the search can even start.

This page puts them in one place, organized by what the display actually says, because that is what you type into a search bar. The facts here are the manufacturers' own, from their service documentation, and each one is cited at the bottom.

The Cross-Brand Fault Code Table

The Split That Matters: Inside the Box or Out in the Yard

Manual scrapers will give you the code. What they will not give you is the only thing that decides what the repair costs: whether the fault is in the cabinet on the wall or in a valve box somewhere in the lawn.

Nelson is the clearest illustration of how arbitrary the naming is across brands. E3 is the open circuit and E8 is the over current, which is the same pair of faults Hunter reports as a station Err and a P Err, under completely different names. Same two electrical conditions, three vocabularies.

If the code points outside, the next question is scope: one zone or all of them. One dead zone is a zone-level diagnosis. Everything dead at once is a water, power, or common wire problem.

Hunter Quick Check: Find a Shorted Station Without a Meter

Hunter built a self test into its controllers that finds shorted wiring and defective solenoids and reports the result as a station number followed by Err. It needs no multimeter, and it appears in a Hunter service document that almost nothing on the web quotes.

1. Press the right arrow, the home (sprinkler) key, minus and plus at the same time. On an ICC the combination is right arrow, minus, plus and PRG.
2. All the LCD segments appear on the display. That is the test waiting.
3. Press plus to start it.
4. The controller walks its stations and reports any fault it finds as a station number plus Err.

How Codes Clear, and Reset Versus Factory Default

Two operational facts about Hunter codes that the support articles leave out, and both of them cause unnecessary callbacks:

• The controller skips the faulting zone until it is repaired. The rest of the program keeps running normally, which is exactly how a homeowner loses one zone for six weeks without noticing anything but a dry strip of grass.
• You press any button to clear the message once the fault is actually fixed. The code does not clear itself. Somebody who repairs the right thing and then sees 3 Err still on the screen usually concludes the repair failed.

Reset is not a factory default

These are two different operations and only one of them erases your programming.

• Reset. On a Hunter, the dial must be in the RUN position to reset, and a successful reset shows 12:00 am. On a modular controller, pressing reset also re-initiates module recognition, which is why “the controller is showing too many or too few stations” is a reset-and-reseat problem long before it is a replacement.
• Full reset, meaning factory default. On a Hunter, hold minus, the right arrow and PRG, press and release the reset button, wait for 12:00 am to appear, then release. This clears the memory back to factory settings, and the controller has to be reprogrammed from nothing.
• Rain Bird ESP-TM2. A small tool in the reset opening and a brief press of RESET is the documented first move for a misbehaving controller. That is a reset, not a factory reset, and the distinction matters because the factory option on these controllers erases every schedule.
• Orbit B-hyve. The documented escalation for a persistent problem is to reset the controller and then re-pair it with the app.

The Ohm Bands, by Brand, With the Caveats Nobody Prints

Every code that sends you out to the valve ends in the same test: resistance across the station and common, measured with the controller off. The number that comes back is where most DIY diagnoses go wrong, because the band everyone quotes is not the band the manufacturer published.

Four things that turn a correct reading into a wrong conclusion:

1. A Hunter master valve reading 40 ohms is inside the generic band and outside Hunter's own spec. Say which band you are using before you condemn anything.
2. A reading taken at the controller includes two runs of field wire. Rain Bird publishes the correction: 14 AWG direct-burial at roughly 2.5 ohms per 1,000 feet, 16 AWG about 4.0, 18 AWG multi-conductor about 6.5. On a long run that is several ohms of the number you just read.
3. Two valves on one station read lower than either solenoid alone. Rain Bird works the math out: a 52 ohm and a 24 ohm solenoid in parallel measure about 17 ohms, which lands a perfectly normal two-valve zone inside the shorted band.
4. Zero and OL are opposite faults. Zero ohms is a dead short. OL is an open. Some widely read support articles lump them together, and they send you to opposite ends of the problem.

And the one that saves the most digging: OL on every zone points at the common wire, not at the zones, because every valve in the yard shares that one conductor. Test zone 1 specifically. OL there means the break sits between the controller and the first valve, which narrows the search enormously.

Brand Notes Worth Knowing Before You Buy a Part

Hunter

Hunter has the deepest code set of any brand in a DFW garage, and a Hunter code is usually specific enough to point at one circuit. Err keeps you at the controller, a station number plus Err sends you to a valve, P Err sends you to the master valve or pump relay, and E99 ERR on an X2 is the front panel. Two symptoms that look like hardware failures and are not: “the station repeats” is a start-time error, because one start time runs every station in a program and the start-time numbers are not station numbers; and Manual Single Station Mode overrides the rain sensor, so a sensor tested in the wrong mode looks dead when it is fine. Full coverage of the models and failures is on our Hunter controller and valve repair page.

Rain Bird

Rain Bird leans on alarms rather than coded strings on the residential lines. The ESP-ME3 raises an alarm for a short or overload in valve, master valve, or pump start relay wiring, and the remedy is the wiring, not the controller. Incompatible OSM is the odd one out: it is a parts vintage mismatch, a post-2002 controller with a ROM-8 module in it. Rain Bird is also the only manufacturer that publishes per-model solenoid coil resistance, which is why the ohm table above has real Rain Bird numbers and borrowed ones for everyone else. More on their equipment on our Rain Bird repair page.

Rachio

Rachio's zone fault is a behavior, not just a message. It restarts the controller, pushes a notification, writes the zone and time into History, and keeps trying the zone on schedule even though it may not water, and it does not finish the schedule past the faulting zone. Fault detection does not exist on Generation 1 hardware at all. Two Rachio-specific traps: the controller has multiple C terminals and some installers land the system common on one meant for the master valve only; and a system that runs from the physical buttons but not the app is usually the M terminal setting, which has to be set to Master Valve, Well or Pump Start Relay, or Neither to match what is actually in the ground. Our Rachio repair page covers the rest.

Orbit B-hyve

Orbit's Smart-Scan names the station, which puts FAULT 3 in the same category as Hunter's 3 Err: the controller has already done the hard part of the diagnosis. PUMP FAULT moves it to the pump or master valve circuit. For a problem that persists after the wiring is sound, Orbit's documented step is a controller reset followed by re-pairing with the app.

Hydrawise, and the limit of “my smart controller will tell me”

Current sensing is not a Hydrawise feature, it is a Hydrawise model feature. The PHC, HPC and HCC have it, at 850, 900 and 1200 mA. The HC does not have it at all. Rachio's equivalent does not exist on Generation 1. So the blanket promise that a smart controller will catch a broken wire is true of some units and false of others sitting on the same wall bracket in the same store.

If It Is a Two-Wire System, the Codes Mean Something Different

On a commercial decoder system, one damaged spot can take down a section or the entire property, because every zone shares the same pair of conductors. Several zones failing at once in one area of a property points at the wire path; one zone failing points at a decoder or a solenoid. The controller-side diagnostics have their own names, and the path does not read like 24 VAC on an ordinary meter, so a standard voltage test can condemn a perfectly good decoder. That is a different discipline, covered on our two-wire decoder repair page.

When to Call

Reasonable to handle yourself:

• Reading the code and figuring out whether it points at the controller or the yard
• Unplugging a remote receiver to see whether Err goes with it
• Breaker, GFCI and outlet checks, including the phone-charger test
• Running Hunter Quick Check
• Deleting the extra program start times behind a repeating-station complaint
• Pressing a button to clear a code after a repair is confirmed

Worth a call:

• Any code that points outside and you cannot find the valve box it points at
• OL on every zone, which means tracing a common wire that can be broken anywhere along its length
• P Err or a master valve fault, where the cause can be the relay's amperage rather than anything broken
• A persistent high or low current alert on a smart controller after the obvious false positives are ruled out
• Anything on a two-wire or decoder system
• A controller that keeps rebooting, because that is a short pulling more current than the power supply can give

Finding a buried fault is equipment work, not patience work. A diagnostic visit brings a wire tracer and a valve locator so the dig is one hole in the right place, and wiring repair or valve repair finishes it. If the diagnosis genuinely lands on the controller, replacing one is a very approachable job, and we will tell you when yours does not need it.

Call (469) 209-4110 or book online. Brandon is a TCEQ Licensed Irrigator, LI0023963, and every repair carries a three year parts and labor warranty.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Everything above comes from manufacturer service documentation rather than from aggregated web advice.