Today I felt I won an award. I felt as though I passed some strange test and now I can move on to the next rewarding level.
What did I do?
I fixed my sprinklers.
To some this may not seem a difficult task. Others laugh and ask why I just didn't call a professional.
I spent days doing research on how to convert our sprinklers into a drip irrigation system. Yes, days. I went to the library and borrowed books on sprinklers, irrigation and for some spice, a few books you actually read for enjoyment. I "Googled" and "YouTubed" so many items on sprinkler valves, drip irrigation, filters, pressure regulators, I made my eyes hurt. After several days of mapping and planning out my attack, I finally went to the store and bought what I needed to fix some leaking sprinkler valves and drip irrigation supplies.
I came home, supplies in hand, and watched one more video. A video that told me that my sprinkler valves weren't up to code. (Evidently specific valves need to be 6-8 inches above the highest sprinkler head...some of my sprinkler heads come up to my knees. Don't ask, this is one of the many unexplained concepts of our sprinkler system.) Back to the store for parts to raise the stupid pipes so they would be up to code. Crossing my fingers that this was also the cause of the "leaking" valves.
Step one: shut the power off to the valves. Check.
Step two: shut off the water....
I can't find the stupid irrigation shut off. I did manage to find my shut off valve for the house though; important information to know. I consult my YouTube and Google libraries and they narrow it down to about four things in my front yard. Two were plastic and two were cement blocks. Plus there was a random cement one in our garage. Why the heck do I need all these boxes? In terror, I cried. Yes, I cried.
I spent countless hours researching the sprinklers, finally convincing my husband that I could handle this without professional help and even bought the supplies. Now I felt I was being forced to call a professional. As you can tell, I don't take defeat very well.
Dave from Aquatech Solutions came and after checking out the problem, he began to raise the valves. I learned a very valuable thing about my sprinkler system....it sucks, it makes no sense. What was supposed to take less than an hour, ended up taking about 2 hours of this guy's time and lots of under the breadth muttering. (My kids were there bombarding him with questions while he worked, so he kept his frustration very G rated. It was appreciated. I wish I could say the same for me when I worked on them. I'm now having to tell Little Dude that "damn" is not an acceptable word....fortunately, that was all he got, because I said way worse things.) More importantly, even after all the extra stuff my system threw at him, he didn't raise his estimate price at all! Yes, it does seem there are honest people out there still.
After the horror of sprinkler valve repair, Dave even took the time to walk me through converting my sprinkler heads to drip irrigation. He even showed me how to replace the valves that were leaking, so I could do it myself for a reduced cost. Oh! He also showed me where the irrigation shut off was. :)
A couple days later I get the replacement valves and get to work replacing them. I am ready to "glue" the valve together and discover I can't open the PVC glue can. I even did what I thought was a no-no and used a wrench. The damn thing wouldn't budge. Back to Lowe's, with kids in tow. The return department guy even tried to open the can. Yes, I laughed out loud at him when he couldn't turn it with his bare hands. I'm sorry, but this is one area my husband complains about. Sometimes he would like to open a few jars for me! What can I say? I'm petite, but I got some strong, wiry arms.
Picking out glue, a Lowe's guy asks me if I need help. I tell him I couldn't open the last can so we're here for another one. He instructs me to get a wrench. Ha ha! It wasn't a no-no, I did something correct.
Back home to fix valve one out of six. I manage to fix it, but the kids tell me I have to stop playing; it's dinner time and they're hungry.
Next day, I take a break from the valves to figure out one of the garden sprinklers. This garden even puzzled the professional. Imagine a sprinkler head coming up out of the ground. Now attach pipe to it in the shape of, well...let's go with the letter "P." It doesn't make sense to me either. So I start digging. I find another sprinkler head completely buried underground. Since it isn't in line with the other two, I'm really confused. Great, now I have to dig up the entire garden to figure out the pipes and what head attaches to what valve.
A week later, I'm so fed up with digging. My muscles hurt, my fingers are permanently bent in the shape of a shovel, I have blisters on top of calluses, needless to say, I don't feel pretty and I'm now pissed at this point. The kids have even lost the "hey, mom is letting us dig in the garden" fun and abandoned me for riding bikes. So I did what anyone would do at this point....I capped the damn things off, fixed the remaining broken one and crossed my fingers that it would work.
It worked. It worked so well that I also had to repair a leak in one of the exposed pipes that I had found during testing. Wow! Those suckers can shoot water far and high! The kids didn't seem to appreciate it very much, though.
Valves are now all up to code and working properly. Plus I only had to replace five, instead of six, so now I have an extra one for future use. Sprinkler timer is working properly. I have figured out what sprinkler heads go to which zone. Now I dust off my drip irrigation map....and I trash it.
Yep, fixing the valves seemed to fix several things I didn't realize were broken. The zones I thought were zones previously, ended up being vastly different. So...back to the drawing board, but it should be easy from here on out....right?
Either way, when Princess was yelling out which sprinklers turned on when I used the sprinkler timer, and they worked correctly, I wasn't sure I should cry or scream in pure joy! So I did the next best thing....I called my husband and talked a million words a minute about my accomplishments until I ran out of air. Evidently, I'm still kind of proud of myself, so I shared with you! Honestly though, I'm just excited I don't need to dig up anymore of that garden. I was getting to the point of buying cement and saying to hell with green crap in my backyard!
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