Orbit 57280 3/4" FPT L-Series Automatic Sprinkler Valve

Item nicely upgraded

This is a great valve. Easy to install, easy to adjust. However, it has a design issue that could be a problem for you. The valve needs to see a differential pressure between the supply side and the output side for the solenoid to function properly. If the irrigation line has very little flow, like, just a few drippers, the valve may not turn off. With larger flow rates, the valve operates perfectly. If your water supply is dirty or sandy, you may need to put a pre-filter in front of the valve, because it won’t tolerate much debris in the valve feed chamber before it fails to operate and requires cleaning.

Good valves good flow can’t go wrong

I purchased 3 of these in (I think) 2020, along with the controller. A year later, one of them quit working (solenoid problem?) and I bought a replacement in May of 2021. Here it is August of 2023 and one of the "old" ones started leaking. However, I must say that I was not the fault of the manufacturer. Several bits of sand had somehow found their way onto the rubber seal and deformed it. I have cleared the sand and we'll see if that's enough. My only other comment is that the controller is tricky to program, and that's coming from a physicist who programs in C and assembly. It would help if the manual would spell out the steps and put in photos that were actually helpful. E.g. numbers can either mean part of a sequence of "on" times, or it can mean the valve number. There are no photos to show you which is which. Moreover, even if you program the times and valve numbers correctly, you still have to tell it which days to come on. The default is NOT every day, which I assumed, resulting in stunted raspberries. I know, I know, I should not have assumed that they would design it like I think they ought to! Still, instruction manuals seem to be and afterthought with many products and are poorly put together, filling up space with obvious stuff and giving little attention to important details that can make or break the experience.

Recently purchased and I am very happy with my purchase. Found it to be very useful.

As Advertised

I used these valves with my otherwise Rainbird™️ system. They work great and are a good price. I used doubled pairs of cat5e cable as control wire to my contriller. My controller supply is 26.5VAC@650mA. I connected these to garden hose instead of PVC. It's important to note that these are threaded as female pipe thread, not female hose thread. I used an FPT > FHT on either end and a MHT > MHT union on the outlet end. If you can find an FPT > MHT adapter, you could do it with one less fitting than I used. I have a regulator upstream of these to keep it around 85psi at the spigot, but have tested briefly at 112psi(my house pressure is unreasonably high because of the sediment level in our water) with no leaks.

The product has serious design flaws.When placed outdoors during winter, it cracks and leaks once temperatures drop below freezing—even if all the valves are opened beforehand to drain the water. Out of the four valves, three were cracked and leaking, making them completely unusable. The remaining one also shows signs of cracking.Since I’m using the full set of Orbit products, I had no choice but to buy replacements. Very disappointed. Would not recommend.