Pulled this nonsense off the irrigation group on Facebook I’ll tell you fellas that place has some ridiculous posts. Figured it’s a Good Friday night laugh for those that see.

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After the sprinkler guys came over to blow out the system, they discovered what they believed to be a bad basement valve. They asked me to find the sprinkler valve in the basement, unscrew the drain cap, and let it drain overnight.

So I went in the basement but had no idea what I was looking at or looking for. I noticed one valve was turned to the "off" position but I couldn't see a drain cap anywhere. I turned the valve on slightly (not sure why) and as you can guess water started to rush through. Then I looked behind the pipe and sure enough that's where the drain cap was.

I drained what I could by unscrewing the cap and after soaking myself a bit it's slowed to a drip. But now I feel like I ruined the integrity of the valve test they wanted me to do and probably need to blow out the remaining water somehow. How do I do this myself to avoid another trip charge?

Came across this PJ-25 the other day attached to a gate valve, a faucet that was tee’d into a former, non existing zone line, and yet another gate valve with a drain coupler - if you look closely, you can see the rail on top of the fence is actually galvanized 1” (my best guess). How interesting!

Can someone share the documentation rachio published for translating the watering settings to actual irrigation system operations. We are still in drought watering restrictions in the southeast based on days of the week and time of day and the water company is started to send out violation notices with very high fines. i need to understand how weather intelligence settings will affect the schedule as i have a limited number of days per week and hours per day.

I also have a tempest weather station feeding data to the rachio and i am trying to understand how that affects the rachio schedule.

This is our first year with an irrigation system (Hydrawise controller). Our guy can’t come winterize it for another week and it’s going to dip to 30 tomorrow morning for a few hours. My read on this is that I should shut the supply off, drain from test cock, and leave valves cracked half open on the backflow preventer. Is that sufficient? Should I also try to run the zones to get water out of the descending branch of the copper piping? Thanks for your help.

Got this house recently. Going to winterize and I notice the filter arrows are backwards. And the filter is gross. Filter is clean or replace? How bad is it the arrows are wrong way?

Put in four 4-inch pop-up sprinkler heads along the sidewalk side of my front yard last weekend. The problem is that this strip is only about 5 ft wide, and it’s also the path my segway automower takes when it heads back to the dock.

At first I keep the mower height around 2.4 inches and let the mower detect the sprinkler heads and go around them. That actually worked fine. But then I tried using vision off zones instead. The problem is that after a few weeks, the soil started settling and a couple of the sprinkler caps sit higher than before. Now the mower occasionally bumps into them. I’m wondering if repeated hits are bad for the sprinkler heads or the mower blades over time.

For anyone running a robot mower with pop-up irrigation, what has worked for you long term? I think removing the sprinker heads and changing the risers could work, but it just takes too much to do that. Trying to figure out the best fix.

do you know which replacements I need to get for this valve? the ones I saw online and in person dont have the same hole pattern

I hope this never fails or I’m sending a JR Mechanic with 11 sawzall blades

Water Hammer problem. Irrigation system was winterized by local irrigation company on 10/2. The irrigation line off the main vibrates, but I can't tell if that's the source or if it's outside. It happens randomly, but is more common between 10am -11am when I'm the only one home and no water is in use. The only time I've heard it before (lived here 15 years) is when I turned on the zone nearest to the house/main, then would get a brief hammer until the heads were up and spraying. 8 zone setup with hunter pro-hc controller.

Hey all,
I've been working on this app that replaces the stock OpenSprinkler UI. It's open source (MIT) and I thought some of you might find it useful.
My own setup is pretty basic (a handful of zones, nothing fancy), so more complex systems might hit rough edges. It's still an early project. And its not a drop in replacement, it uses a server side so the api password never leaves the server and it has a different login gate.
Im inviting anyone who uses opensprinklers to test it and help me by opening issues or even PRs.
its called HydroDash and can be found here: https://github.com/gilbertorconde/HydroDash
As i said, it works pretty well for my own system, but i have no way to test the other features like, for instance, sensors so.. anyway, any help would be appreciated

Just asking for a break down of this set up, if possible. Want to make sure I do it right the first time. Winterizing the irrigation. Thanks for the dumbification!

So I noticed my neighbor's drip line was cut by the yard company employed by the builder before he purchased the home. He fixed the cut, but then I noticed that there is brown line going into the yard. I thought brown is for just drip line. We are also having a issue with the area staying wet or damp. Even with sprinklers nkt running.

Past few months I’ve been going around the yard finding broken sprinklers and broken risers and fixing/capping off the ones I don’t need anymore. However, this one seems to have got me. I’m pretty sure I’ve narrowed down where the leak is coming from to some degree, but can’t fit my hand deep enough to actually know. I am by no means an expert, and have literally zero experience with irrigation before I started doing everything myself. I don’t wanna turn a small problem into a bigger one, and part of me thinks I’ll be able to get to it… but I don’t think I’d even really know how to plug it the right way. I also don’t wanna spend a bunch of money I don’t have. But, maybe it’s time I throw in the towel and let a professional stop the leak? The past couple busted sprinklers I found, tree roots had snapped the riser almost flush with where it screws in. I’m hoping that’s what happened here, and it won’t cost an arm and a leg…

Alright, i’m fairly new to drip. I got one zone that is running about 17 GPM and has such low pressure, it doesn’t register on my gauge. I tested in multiple different spots too, even tried a different gauge. Got another zone that is putting out 27 GPM and shows 15-20 PSI in multiple places on the zone. What gives? Both are 1” Hunter ICV with a filter before the manifold then a pressure regulator after each valve. One thing I know for sure, the design is SHIT. Laterals are probably 1” max, and the friction loss due to pipe size and flow has to be at least 5-7psi.

Hi all, I'm looking at buying an air compressor for sprinkler winterization (as well as other garage use) and I'm confused by the recommended CFM. As I understand it, you want a compressor that can sustain like 50psi for a while to get some air volume behind the water to get it out of the lines. Thats why the 6 gallon pancake compressors with 5cfm aren't recommended. I found a husky 30 gallon compressor but it also says 5cfm. I don't understand why they are similar cfm but drastically different volume. I would think there would be a correlation between the two.

Can I just get the Husky 30 gallon? I only have four zones with no more than six heads per. The recommended 20cfm compressors are $1000+ at least and I dont want to spend that money.

Any advice would be appreciated!

I can't figure out which piece I need - The guy who did it last year was able to blow out & connect from here, can't figure out which adapter he used. Anyone??

Morning all. Do any of you cover your backflow for irrigation in the winter after you blowout your system? I see conflicting pros and cons online.

Need to replace tubing on seninger risers and cant find the right size tubing. Its .270 ID pe and I need a roll of it, not the standard 3ft cut. Any ideas? Any other tubing that will fit? Ive googled like crazy and cant find.

So at my current gig I’ve been servicing a beach resort for the last two years and have mentioned one of the two 1 1/2” reclaim tie ins is completely rusted and not serviceable unless you spend an hour with a 10” pipe wrench and a 3lb sledge. After two years of complaining about this we now can’t get the water on. What would you do in this situation knowing you’ve been proposing the correct remedy for years and now that it finally did what you said it would your catching flack from the boss due to him not proposing the remedy you’ve been recommending…….

Me and a few other irrigation techs have been going back and fourth about a hypothetical scenario. You have a rectangle area that is 180’ long by 100ft wide. There is a well house in the very middle that you would tie into for power and water. Flow rate of 15GPM and 60PSI. Some of us think it can be done in 4 vertical zones others think 6 and a couple odd balls of 3 and 8. How what would you guys do it and/or layout. All we use is 1inch pvc with Rainbird 5000 and Hunter PGP. Thanks for playing gents. PFA

Hi everyone,

I am setting up winterization for my residential sprinkler system and got conflicting advice from my installer, so I'd appreciate some real-world input.

My installer claims I can just buy a cheap, compact tankless suitcase compressor (oilless, no receiver tank, ~1100W, roughly 180 l/min / 6 CFM rated intake, reality ~50–60 l/min free air delivery) and that "it will just take longer, but it's totally fine."

System Specs:

• Zoning: 4 zones (Hunter PGV 1" valves)
• Heads: 20× Hunter Pro-Spray bodies with Hunter MP 2000 rotators (~5 heads per zone)
• Pipe: 225 meters (approx. 740 ft) of 25mm OD HDPE pipe (roughly 3/4" - 1" equivalent)
• Controller: Hunter X-Core / PC 4

The choice I'm facing:

1. Option A: Compact tankless oilless compressor (like SCHEPPACH air tank 2l, oilles Air Case).
2. Option B: Workshop oil-lubricated 2-cylinder compressor with a 50L (13 gal) tank, 1.5 kW motor, regulated down to 3.0–3.5 bar (45–50 PSI) for blowout.

My concerns: From basic physics, blowing out irrigation requires high CFM (volume) rather than high pressure, especially to pop up 5 MP Rotators at once and sweep out the standing water from 25mm pipes. With a tankless suitcase unit, wouldn't the air just skim over the top of the water column in the pipes while thermal overload cooks the compressor?

Has anyone actually successfully and safely winterized a 4-zone MP Rotator system using a tankless suitcase compressor, or is a 50L receiver tank mandatory here?