All_Wet and eriocaulon, Thanks for more thoughts. I have no idea how old our system is, but we have lived here ten years and it was installed well before we arrived. I appreciate the link to Rainbird valves. That was thoughtful of you. I had checked Rainbird's site as well as Lowe's and Home Depot before posting here. I had hoped that I could find a valve with a "body" similar to these old ones so that I could reuse the old base and not have to cut the 1" pvc. However all of the current "advanced designs" are such that I cannot do that. Since all of the valves are 18" underground, with my poor hearing, I would never be able to hear the water running in the defective valve though that idea makes sense. I never thought of a stethiscope. That is also a good idea. I finally "flipped a coin" and selected one valve and replaced it with a nice modern one with a manual On/Off Bypass Lever. That seems to have done the trick, at least there is no evidence of any water flow now while the system controller is not on, and that was what I was trying to do. So I think the job is done. Thank you for taking the time to help!

"Based on your wild misunderstanding of the "conventional" way to wire light fixtures, I'm thinking that you really need to buy and study a basic wiring book or hire a local licensed electrician." I have to agree. I know this is a DIY site, but when it comes to something like electricity the DIY should at least take the time to gain some knowledge on theory and circuits, and learn some basics before diving in. Getting it to work by trial and error is not a good idea at all, and with no knowledge of what you are doing can be a dangerous thing. Sure eventually you can get it to work, but how safe will it be? Have you considered the fact that the circuit breaker is possibly damaged from the repeated short circuiting and should be replaced?

I once worked on a house where the well had a separate connection to the meter, resulting in a 2nd main cutoff. Instead of the power going directly to the well, that 20 amp circuit had been tapped by a prevoius DIYer for lights on the porch, resulting in a fried screwdriver for me.

Again I think it's an emergency fixture, with a battery back up, that has a switched and un-switched feed. the reason the light is dim is because it's running on the battery at that point, (not full power) some emergency fixtures are lit 24/7. when the power fails it runs on the battery, giving light for egress. You can't put these fixtures on a switch. if it was on a switch, when you turn the switch off, the light would switch to battery backup. Eventually the battery would drain and the light would go off. This could take minutes or hours depending on how old the battery is. Some emergency fixtures can be put on a switch. The light goes on and off with the switch. and when the power fails it switches to battery back up giving light for egress they do this by having a switched feed and an unswitched(constant) feed to the fixture When you turn off the switch, the fixture knows its not a power failure because it still sees the power from the unswitched feed. so the light turns the off. (instead of switching to battery backup) In the case of power failure, no matter what position the switch is in, the fixture no longer sees the unswitched feed(constant feed) and switches the light over to battery back up This is how the fixture knows if the power was cut due to someone turning off the switch or due to power failure However, I've only seen these fixtures in commercial applications. Not that they can't be in residential, I've just never seen it. also I have never seen this type of fixture that wasn't florescent (so if your fixtures are not florescent then I am probably wrong) the house is old as well. I don't know how old battery backup technology is. my gut tells me it's not 80 years old. so it may or may not be what I've described Open up one of the fixtures and see if the ballast has a wire marked switched feed and a wire marked unswitched feed. if it does I could be right if it doesn't then I'm not good luck!!!!