If it isn’t one thing it another… Every year it’s time to get the sprinklers going to water my weeds grass. When we got back from California my front lawn was loaded with dandelions. The ducks to a good job of keeping them at bay in the back yard. Maybe I should let them out front 🤔. Things were looking a little dry and I knew I should have got them running before we left. I was just the slightest bit busy rebuilding my transmission, so I forgot about it. Oops, my bad…
Normally I get a broken/bad sprinkler every year but to my surprise they were all running good. I guess there is a first time for everything. After 2 days I received a knock at the the door. An older gentleman told me that I was flooding out by the main valve. Just as my luck would have it lately. I swear if it isn’t one thing it another. Well I don’t have time to sit around and be frustrated, it’s time to start digging.
With the valve turned off I dug down and exposed the valve and all the pipes around it. Making sure to give myself plenty of room to work. I’m just glad it was easy digging and there weren’t any rocks. Taking a look at everything didn’t reveal the leak. So I turned the valve on very slow and wait for this leak to expose itself. Well it’s not like it has clothes or anything… 😉
Perfect, right at the T where is comes up to hook up a compressor to blow the sprinklers out. I think this one was self inflicted. I probably tightened it a little too tight when blowing out the sprinklers last.
Now remember when you are cutting the broken piece out, really think about how it is going to go back together. You have to leave room on the straight pieces to fit into the different fittings. Sometimes you have to just cut the whole thing out and start from scratch.
So off to Home Depot to get parts… That wasn’t as easy as expected. They didn’t have a few fittings that would match what I took out. Time for some ingenuity… A couple adapters later and this is what I came up with.
The piece going to the back flow manifold came out the same..
There is enough movement in the piece that 90’s up to the manifold to flex it out of the way in order to put the last piece in. That piece that goes to the manifold has a threaded collar on the manifold side. So one could make the whole piece up and set it in place and tighten the threaded collar.
Remember to always use some sort of thread sealing tape when you have any threaded fittings
That went back together pretty nicely. Having that threaded coupler at the manifold sure helped.
Since the valve was a royal pain to turn on and off I soaked it really good with some WD-40 while I waiting for the glue to dry.
Now the moment of truth… Time to turn the water on!!
Welp, no leaks I guess I will call this repair job a success. I’m not gonna back fill it right away. I am gonna let it marinate for a bit just to be safe. It wouldn’t be fun to have to dig it up again.
So this pile of dirt sitting on the tarp will just hang out for a while. Always use something when putting dirt on the grass. It is no fun to try and get all that dirt out of the grass. Plus it looks like crap afterwords.
When I backfilled it I used a 2x4 to compact the dirt. Add 3-4 inches of dirt then compact it.
Get the valve box nice and level and keep backfilling and compacting.
Replace those pieces of sod and it’s like I wasn’t even there… almost 😉
Hopefully my lawn will be happy and Healy this summer. Once I get those dang dandelions outta there. The parts cost me about $20 and the labor was free. 😉😉. Save yourself some money and learn how to do something new by Doing It Yourself. You might be surprised at the skill you have once you give something new a try.
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