Question regarding workings of solenoid valve

[slojmn1]

My solenoid valve quit working on my regulator setup for my calcium reactor and it was suggested that there may be a faulty part to the valve or it may be gunked up and not able to close and open properly. I know nothing of solenoid valves but decided to check this theory out. It was letting CO2 into the system through the needle valve but would not shut it off when pH levels instructed Ph controller to shut off the CO2 flow through the solenoid. I unplugged the solenoid and CO2 continued to flow. Today I decided to see if it was in fact gunked up. I took the plug off the solenoid valve unscrewed the four screws and found the little mechanism with a spring on it that, I am assuming, opens and closes the valve. It seemed fine. I lightly pushed it open and closed and it seemed to work smoothly. I put it all back together and now I can't get any flow through the needle valve. The regulator is registering pressure in the bottle as well as pressure in the regulator so I know there is CO2 waiting to flow through the needle valve. NO GO. It appears that I have now got the solenoid in the closed position and it will not allow any CO2 to flow from the regulator to the needle valve and into my reactor. Any help here would be appreciated. Could the plug to the solenoid have gone bad. I don't know how to check for this.

 

[slojmn1]

It is possible after further inspection that this whole episode could have been "Operator Error". I know something went wrong early yesterday when the CO2 would not stop going into the system despite the solenoid being powered down, stillnot sure what that was about. After that, when I was fiddling and trying to make the darn thing work, it appears that I have been plugging the solenoid into the wrong outlet on my pH controller, WHAT A DORK

. I have now marked which outlet the solenoid gets plugged into. All is working as it should. Hoewever, the real test will come later in the day when The CO2 needs to be shut off by the solenoid. If it works then I think all is well. If it does not work. Back to the drawing board. I have a feeling it will work. Intuition I guess, or maybe just plain HOPE . My friend says there is thing called FM in the world of electronics. You know when something won't work and you fiddle and fiddle with it, still wont work so you fiddle some more. Then it works, but you don't know why or what you did to fix it, this is FM, F***ing Magic. I bit crude but it made me laugh this morning as I was wondering what the heck to do.