First off I would like to thank Mike lehua for your replies and sharing your knowledge. I turned on each zone manually and all the heads and zones worked and pressure was normal for all zones. Then I cut off all the wire/grease caps, in the valve box and restripped and reconnected every wire, using new waterproof wire nuts. I then took the OLD (supposedly fried) timer and reconnected it. The sprinkler system works perfectly and after reprogramming the timer, it works perfectly as well. The good news is that you guys saved me a ton of money, all I really had to buy were wire nuts, and my system is working again. I am very grateful for your help. The bad news is that I have to decide what to do about the guy that came to fix my system. He didn't give me any impression that he was coming to estimate and not fix. When he got here he was wearing dressy clothes and shoes, surely not something you would expect if a guy is gonna crawl around by a valve box. He told me that the timer was fried after looking at it for 10 seconds. He said it was so fried he couldn't remove the fuse. He then shot me an email estimate from his ipad, which he had in his vehicle. The estimate was for $300, which was for a new timer and the labor to install it. He said that if there were wire problems, valve problems, pvc problems, etc. the price would go up accordingly. That was when I started to read and talk to you guys. When I took the timer off the wall, not only was the fuse easy to remove, it was not burned out. There was power getting to the timer and all stored data was still visible. The Tech/Owner that told me the unit was fried certainly couldn't have missed that. So, if I was to have believed him, it would have cost me $300, plus whatever else he felt he needed/wanted to add to the bill. The only problem was clearly a connection. The funny thing is that I went through a service similar to "Angie's List" to find him. The reviews on the site were raving as to how great the company is....I am confused. I can just imagine how many old widows/widowers are overpaying through the nose, overpaying for things in situations similar to mine. In closing, I think you guys were not only correct about the connections, but also about the common ground being the one. All the connections I removed looked perfect, except for the common wire connect to the batch of wires coming from each valve. The wire coating looked dark, not white, and even the wiring looked a bit odd. I stripped the common a bit further down and it looked clean, so I reconnected. Thanks Agin!!!! Rick

Sounds like you have a switchloop, and you connected the switch (and timer) in parallel with the receptacle instead of in series with it. You are creating a direct short every time you turn on the switch. You probably messed up the wiring at the receptacle. Incoming white goes to silver screw on receptacle. Black hot is connected to white wire in the cable to the switch (which should have black tape on it or be colored black with paint or ink). Return black wire from the switch cable goes to the brass screw on the receptacle. Bare grounds are all connected together, then pigtailed to metal boxes, if they are metal.

Not enough information. For the bathrooms I suspect you have caused a ground fault. Did you try to reset the GFCI?

Get parts catalog for your model ref, they have a diagram of all the parts and how they fit together, follow that and you shouldn't get it off.