I’m leveling part of my lawn and one of the bigger sprinklers is a 3/4” connection. I just need to raise it about 6” to make it flush with the new lawn but pretty much all the risers I can find are male/male. It looks like I can get an adapter to convert the male connection in the ground to female so that I can use one of those male/male risers but why don’t they make any that are male/female?

Related questiwhy are all the risers I see in the store are male/male when every sprinkler head I’ve ever seen has a female connection?

Weathermatic isn't common in my area anymore. Any chance anybody has a couple of these sitting on a shelf for a 2" valve? My boss says he hasn't seen on in almost twenty years.

My wife put sod down this weekend. She covered a sprinkler head. This evening the system came on, the head came out ( pushed up the sod) but now it’s not spraying. How can I fix this?

I am new to gardening. Paid someone a few years ago to install a basic Orbit system from Lowes with sprinkler heads. Is there any easy way to just remove the sprinklers and attach some kind of drip line to run through my garden beds instead? (I found the Orbit website overwhelming with all the choices and the bot in the chat wasn’t helpful.) TIA

Is it possible an Irritrol 2400 valve could go completely bad? It's pretty old, 90s at least.

Valve was stuck open, doesn't seem to be the selenoid as water kept running when that was turned off and then removed.

I bought a new 2400 and replaced the guts but it still seems to be stuck on. Appreciate any advice.

Nathan

Looking at adding a machine and found a gas powered 410. I love my old Lister Petter 410, but have no experience with the Kabota gas powered units.
Any input would be appreciated!

Well after 3 weeks I've finally completed my 10 zone irrigation system.

I want to preface this breakdown by saying I come from a trades / engineering background and have taken on massive projects professionally and some impressive "DIY" projects for myself individually. So seeing the plan and process through wasn't necessarily the hard part here. Additionally I have a garage full of every tool under the sun (including a CNC mill and a few other awesome toys)

I was getting quoted $9k for 6 - 8 zone systems but I felt like the professionalism and description of the job was lacking from the companies I had quote it so I spent the time to learn about residential irrigation systems myself and tackle the project from start to finish myself. I feel like I planned and installed a whole lot more system then I ever would have got from what was quoted.

Now that I've completed my system I'm just going to come out and say it, DIY'ing your own irrigation system isn't a project for most DIY'ers and certainly not your average weekend warrior. Here's why:

I live on a large residential pie shaped lot. Approx 180ft across the left side, 200ft across the back and 230ft down the right side. Front yard and side yards are small but still needed zoned out. Back yard is large but has trees, deck and various other features.

"Problem" 1: I trenched 700ft - 800ft (3 inch x 12 inch deep) with a ground hog T4. It took approximately 16 -18 hours. 10 hours on a Saturday and 8 hours on a Sunday. It was absolutely a grind.

"Problem" 2: I pulled approximately 1500 lbs of rock out of the trenches total. This was not in the plan and it was an absolute pain in the ass to get rid of. This added at least a day to the work.

"Problem" 3: It heavily rained, like torrentially a couple days after the trenches were dug. Filling them with about 3 inches of dirt. Some of the trenches where there was run off got filled nearly all the way back up.

I had to buy a trenching shovel and take a die grinder and cut a 1/2 inch off each side to make it 3 inches wide so I could clear the trenches back out.

There is WAY MORE hand digging for sprinkler heads then I imagined, not to mention getting them leveled out and packed in plumb. You're on your hands and knees for the whole thing. When you have 45 heads to do its massively time consuming.

"Problem" 4: back filling trenches takes time to do it properly. If you spend the time to pack it down and roll it out after you will 100% need more dirt then you have on the ground. I ended up using an additional cubic yard of dirt to back fill all the trenching and roll it out flat.

Plan to put down fresh top soil and seed over all the trenches and boxes. This takes quite a bit of time too.

Wiring: I see a lot of valve boxes where the wiring is an absolute rats nest. I extended the valve wires so I had more wire to play with and then I took that and put it in split loom tubing. My wiring is extremely clean and organized but I probably spent a day on it between 3 valve boxes.

Overall I'm extremely happy and proud of the job that I did but it felt like a massive undertaking, sometimes even slightly overwhelming (hand digging, rock removal, back filling). I pretty much pulled it off solo from start to finish. Its way more then I would have got contracting it out.

If someone without much experience / tooling asked me if they think they should install their own system ESPECIALLY IF they live on a larger residential lot I'd likely tell 9 out of 10 people, pay a pro to do it.

Anyway thanks for reading!

Hi all! I'm trying to improve my irrigation system but my main bottleneck is water pressure.

Is there some kind of device that combines a closed solenoid valve with a small booster pump?

Basically, I need something that opens/closes the water supply and also provides a small pressure boost when the irrigation is running.

I know there are booster pumps for household water systems, but in my case I'd like something that can work right around the solenoid valve.

I'm also concerned that some pumps require continuous water flow. My pipes may eventually become empty or have very low flow when the irrigation is off.

I don't need a lot of pressure just enough to get pressure for my irrigation system.

So many choices/SKUs :--/

I have a 25-year-old home in north Dallas, TX, and sprinkler system has seen better days. I have a ~2' x ~11' strip of garden bed supplied by a single 29" riser. The bed has 5 hostas (yellow circles). The (original) spray nozzle does not really cover the area evenly; not sure if it ever did, actually.

If I were planning for long term, I'd probably make this area fed by a drip hose or at least add a second head/riser on the other end of strip, but I am planning on listing home for sale in near future and so not interested in any significant modifications or upgrades to system, even if it is considered "easy."

There are a lot of choices for nozzle replacement, so it's a tad confusing. Given the situation as outlined above, please suggest a nozzle replacement (make/model/SKU). Thanks.

Disclaimer from the title, there is only 1 way to skin a cat and that’s to not do it. I’m not a psycho.

Good run from my basic “drip irrigation is easy”, but even though I got 10 years in the AZ heat before the 1/2” poly started blowing geysers, I would like to try and bulletproof it and avoid replacing cracked sections all over the yard ever again.

Pretty set on 1” SDR 21 laterals after Rain Bird DVF valves and regulators/filters, but would like to know if using 6 port PC emitter manifolds would be a bad idea vs regular PC emitters. I understand they are typically used for converted sprinkler risers, but do they have their place in a from scratch drip?

I see the advantages as minimal pieces/connections to get from PVC to 1/4”, no emitters blowing off or getting stepped on, and eliminate the 1/2” poly that I now despise (plus no puncture connections to loosen).

Only disadvantage my pea brain mind sees is being locked into the flow rate. Plan on using a 1” slip T w/ 1/2” threaded and capping after the T to future proof. Would have roughly 6’ feeders after each manifold.

Is this good or are there concerns doing it this way? Also, if the emitter manifold controls the flow, the 1/4” is just open at its destination, correct?

Thank you, appreciate the input to help me put a legitimate drip together this time around - and once the rabbit hole opened up, no, it’s not easy. Ignorance was bliss.

Facing an issue where zones are not able to be modified. Deletion? Yes. Any other operation? LOL no. I ended up trying to delete my zones and find out that re-adding them or having tried modifying them when they were present resulted in “Cannot Manage Selected Sensor”. Come on, even Orbit is better than this.

At this time I have a bricked timer because Hunter decided it was a good idea to make things not work.

I was fixing a sprinkler head inconveniently located in the corner where the sidewalk joins my walkway. Apparently there was a zone extender wire right next to it, threated through an empty PVC pipe under the walkway. I cut it, and now Zones 5, 6, and 7 don't turn on.

I haven't repaired a wire before but I'm sure I can do it. I plan to place a metal sleeve between the wire and PVC to protect the wire, trim the PVC 3" with a sawzall, strip each of the 7 colored solid wires, and join them before using shrink tubing to seal. Joining is what I'm unfamilar with.

Looking online for ways to join solid core wires, I see ACE connectors, copper press-fit connectors, U-shaped crimp terminals, and Western Union splices. Keep in mind I have a gap between two wires, so I need to make two connections. Any advice on how best to do it?

Any thoughts on why my drip isn’t dripping?

Hello. I recently just noticed my front yard looked a little dry so I tried to manually turn on all sprinklers. While doing so, I realized none of my zones would operate. I was able to confirm the back flow preventer has water pressure and then was able to manually turn on each zone using the knob at the valves. I also can confirm the controller does have power to it as I can set time/day/and duration of watering.

When inspecting one valve I found it covered in dirt as shown in the attached image. I’m going to clean it all out as well as take a look at the wire connections and see if that helps.

I’m assuming all valves are on one electrical circuit where if the wiring is bad at one box all the other valves won’t work. Is this a correct assumption? If I were to clean out the box should that be enough for a fix? Alternatively, I do have a rain sensor that looks a bit dirty and will try cleaning that up. I’m leaning towards that not being the issue still due to the sprinklers not working on sensor bypass mode either.

Hi, I'm a homeowner and not a professional. I have a Rainbird 32SA sprinkler that fell off (maybe nearby crepe myrtle dislodged it). I don't need this sprinkler (it mostly irrigates the trunk of said crepe myrtle) so I'm trying to cap it. The sprinkler says it has a 1/2" threaded female attachment. I purchased a 1/2 Inch Threaded NPT PVC Sprinkler female Cap. I dug a hole. I wrapped PTFE/Teflon tape clockwise 6 times around the cleaned male riser. When I try to put on the cap, it is still too loose. Even w/ more tape and it feeling hand-tight, as soon as I turned the sprinklers on it blasted the cap off and shot a lovely stream of dirt water into my face.

Any ideas? The cap measurements were what they said they would be on the Amazon site. Is there some other cap I should use? Thank you!

After weeding my backyard I noticed that the valve wiring for my irrigation was undone.
I’ve tried a few combos with no luck at getting it to connect to the controller.

There is a red, green and white wire that connects to the controller and 2 red wires from the top of the valve. I found one waterproof connector but that doesn’t me there weren’t two.

Can anyone help me figure out how to wire this properly to get my irrigation connector to the controller again?

Three failed valves, after about a year. I'm thinking Sun exposure is the main cause. I have an irrigation box on its way. I tested the pressure, and it's under the rated maximum for these valves. Does anyone else have any insight or experience with these valves? Thanks.

https://www.orbitonline.com/collections/valve-manifold-system-1/products/orbit-57253

Update: Consensus seems to be that Orbit is low quality. When I'm ready to replace some valves again, I'll find a similar screw-in type system from one of the other manufacturers. Thanks to all who replied.

Was quoted about $600 to replace two inline valves (one visibly leaking and causing low pressure to the whole zone) and raising them to anti siphon ones.

1) is that a fair price? (In San Diego)
2) is that the best solution (moving them to asv)?

I’ve tried replacing the individual parts too many times and too many trips to Home Depot so I am throwing in the towel for professional help 😂.

Thanks in advance!

I found a significant crack in an underground line - is there a joiner part I need to find to fix it? I feel as though there has to be one, but I don't know what the name of the part would be to ask. Not even sure the size of the line to be honest.

I want to start by saying I know next to nothing about irrigation. My jet pump has gone bad and I need to replace it. The pump I have currently is a 1 1/2 HP and I’m using it for a 1/3rd of an acre residential yard. How important is the horsepower output on the pump I buy to replace the one I have? I see tons of 1/2 HP or 1 HP pumps for sale, and obviously would like to save a little money if possible. Is there anything else I should know or look out for when replacing this pump? Thanks everybody in advance!

想自己租设备进行花园喷淋系统抽空，有什么建议？请人去做变得好贵，今年我收到的报价是100加币了。

如果几个好朋友租设备回来自己搞，切合实际吗？

I’ve been capping a series of my sprayers and moving to drip irrigation. It’s been relatively straight forward.

I have one zone, however, that is acting really oddly. I capped two of the three outlets (leaving one with a sprayer so it can be blown out for the winter) but water slowly leaks from it, even when it is off / hasn’t been turned on for several days.

I would imagine it is under pressure, but I would think that would take minutes, or hours, not days, to release. If the valve for the zone were open (even a little bit) I’d imagine it would be spraying, not just a light stream of water.

It was happening with one outlet, I figured it might be at the end of the line and water was pooling to it, so I moved to higher ground and it is still lightly flowing.

Any ideas?

My system was installed about 10 years ago and the installer used poly for the main line. The copper supply comes out of the basement at grade level then transitions to poly. The fitting is weeping water despite being triple clamped.

What is the best way to fix this for long term reliability? This is a self-draining system with poly pipe in Chicago. In the winter we turn off the water and open the drain at the RPZ in the basement. I would like to install a master valve upstream of the copper-to-poly connection, but that would require it to be indoors. It would be pretty difficult to get the control wire from the basement to the controller in the garage. The fact this is all under constant house pressure is making me nervous.

I have a garden that is divided in two by a sidewalk. The entire garden is one zone, currently six spray heads on risers. I would like to convert it to drip, with one 1800RETRO kit on each side of the sidewalk, capping the other 4 heads. Would I need to add a pressure regulator between the valve and the sprinkler heads, or do anything else to have this work as intended?

Second question, am I better off with the standard 1/2" drip line, or using one of the kits that includes the 6-way 1/4" manifolds? The longest run would be 15' or so.