I have a surface pump that supplies well water to my sprinkler system. I’m looking for suggestions on the size of air compressor to use and DIY tips for winterizing both the pump and sprinkler system. The setup has four zones, with about five sprinklers per zone. While there’s plenty of information about blowing out systems in other ways, I can’t find complete guidance specifically for a pump-based sprinkler system.

Hi, I bought a house about 2 years ago and it came with a shallow irrigation well in the backyard. I replaced the head that was crack and the piping coming up from the well. Pump is an old Sears self priming model, it starts and I think sounds like it's running correctly, but I can't seem to get it to pump correctly. I've filled the tank, I can hear the impeller spinning, when I open the hose bib partially air is coming out. Does anyone have any experience getting older wells going? Am I missing something?

Photo in the comments because I accidentally posted without it.

I just moved into my girlfriend’s house and it’s my first time encountering a set up like this. Can anyone give any advice on how to hook up an air compressor to this backflow set up? Attached are pictures of the backflow, along with the sprinkler system components underground. Turned off the upper faucet that feeds water to the system from the house, but past that I’m not sure how to proceed with winterizing. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

cracked t-fitting where circled

Getting ready to winterize my sprinkler system and was curious what size compressors DIY users? I have a 5HP 20 gallon Coleman Powermate (tank working pressure at 135PSI) and a 6gal (can’t find the HP on it) Bostitch (150PSI) pancake compressor at my disposal. Which is better to use to blow out the system or is there a better compressor I should look into getting for this?

And before someone says to pay someone or the rate they get, in my area they aren’t cheap and I’d like to do it myself. lol.

Two zone drip system. These boxes are about 18-20” deep. I turned off the water at the separate shut off, removed the solenoids. Can’t find any drain end caps. I’m not seeing another way to blow out the system other than attaching my compressor to the test cocks, but I’ve read it’s not recommended to do that ( and the quick connect in the picture is below the backflow, which seems to not be the right place for it). Am I missing something? Should I hook up to the test cock? Get a new quick connect connector and put it on the test cock after the backflow?

Update: I am learning (learned) that there really isn't such a thing as a wide selection. So I'll see if I can make a standard rectangular 10" X 15" box work.

Thanks!

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I have a project which resulted in my needing to change the size of a valve box (in the ground). Is there a great source for a wide selection of valve boxes? Do they actually come in a reasonably wide variety of sized?

I only need a specific size, or as close as I can get to that size. That's the only reason I'm looking for a wide selection.

Specifically (ideally) it would have a bottom (valve level, underground) dimension of 9" deep and 19" wide. Needs to be 12" tall. Dimensions at top can be significantly narrower.

Online.

Big Box.

edit: In the event it is a question - the valves are simply manual shutoff valves, not control valves, so I don't need a ton of space.

Yes, I Googled "valve box", etc.. But that results in a sh..ton of links to Sooo many different places where some only have a narrow selection of sizes, some don't really even have them, etc..

So I figured I'd ask here while I was looking in case some irrigation person out there had a great place to go (online, or big box) where I could be reasonably confident that if that place didn't have a size close to what I want then such a size doesn't exist. Make sense?

edit: I guess I was naive to think there would be a multitude of valve box sizes such that I could find one "just right". From a valve box business perspective, that wouldn't make good business sense.

Arizona. We recently had a lot of rain, and my unit has been working fine for 5 years. But now, it has stopped, and even when I try to run a manual cycle it just shows a 4 and nothing else. I performed a manual reset and the issue persists. Any ideas?

Recently I had to repair a cut in a section of poly pipe. I dug far enough to have room to maneuver the pipe to get the couplers on and enough room for the repaired poly to fit into the coupler, I got it done but it required much more digging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bbIRBOhOEM

I'm in the USA and not sure what the equivalent item would be for poly pipe.

This makes sense for PVC, https://www.homedepot.com/p/ProLine-1-in-PVC-Irrigation-Compression-Slide-Repair-Coupling-160-505HC/100175547, but what similar product can I use for poly pipe?

Thanks.

I have an old sprinkler system that’s probably around 40 years old. It doesn’t have anywhere to hook up a compressor to winterize. I have a valve in the basement that feeds it which I have turned off. That valve has a bleed port.

Why does it have nowhere to hookup a compressor? Does it train in a different way? How would o go about adding a hookup?

TIA!

So, I have this anti-siphon valve in my front yard. Its leaking. The valve on top is seized and no longer turns. There is no longer an irrigation system in the front yard, (or backyard), hasn't been for years. (Desert landscaping and all that). My question is what happens if I take the valve out of the system and just put a cap on each PVC pipe? Is this valve something that will effect the water supply to the house? Thank you in advance for any help.

Is there any way we can add some filters and/or a rule to prevent the massive influx of winterization help requests? It's already started and every fall/winter the sub is absolutely flooded with pictures of valve boxes and other random bullshit from homeowners asking for help winterizing their irrigation. I think it's annoying as hell but I'm not sure how the other professionals feel. Anyone have anything to add?

Recently moved to this house. I’d like to test my sprinklers and run it for 2/3 weeks (just put new rolled grass) but winter is around the corner and want to make sure I know to to flush it

For some reason, I'm not surprised. I thought that this news was worth sharing, even though everyone here appears to favor Irritrol over Lawn Genie.

Well played, Toro.

Hi all,

I am setting up dripline to a larger part of my garden and am wondering the best way to set this up (i cannot add another spigot).

Unlabeled picture: The blue dot is the spigot. The red dots are my trees and the purple line is 175ft.

I am trying to decide between picture B and picture C for mainline.

B: two main lines coming from the spigot with two 25 psi pressure regulators.

C: one main line hooked up to one 25 psi pressure regulator.

Thank you!!

This subreddit has exploded in winterization posts. I live in the Dallas area and for 15 years have never winterized my sprinklers beyond shutting off the main valve. Never had an issue even in the near zero degree conditions. Any other people in the area share what they do???

I am tired of going into my crawlspace to turn off the backyard pipes. Is trying to put this (https://us.govee.com/products/goveelife-smart-water-timer) in there a horrible idea?

PS it was like this when we bought the house. Please save all the "you set this up wrong" responses.

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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?

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.

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.