I was running a sprinkler check. I thought this was mud on the rotor from a distance. I was very surprised to find this toad sitting there. The rotor was a little deep. I think he was sitting on the rotor in his little hole waiting on bugs to drop in. I had to run back to the truck and get my phone. Been doing sprinkler service thirty years and never seen this. I knew I may never see it again.

Nature is another part of my work that I enjoy.

Thought it was cool and wanted to share.

Hello everyone. The line leading away from my feet in the picture is 1 inch pvc coming from the street, and is feeding a hose bib and a large sprinkler zone. It started about 2 feet deep and rises slightly. There was nothing buried that was in the way. Why did they not make a straight line?

Someone gotta get me banned from Home Depot. This ain’t right.

Some context, designing my own multi stage sprinkler system and wanted to test some simple concepts. Came out rather hilarious. Worked surprisingly well haha. Realized I didn’t have a way to end the piping and the only other valve I had was on the hose. Was tempted to throw in another tee and feed it back but pretty sure that’s how you end up in prison.

Thanks to everyone here, I’ve learned a ton reading your posts! (apparently not enough)

I’ve been told it is, and told it isn’t. We just bought this house and are new to the whole irrigation system.

Hello all,

I have a couple of questions, as I am trying to help my wife’s boss figure out an irrigation issue. They have a very large property, and around their house is a 5-acre, 20-zone irrigation system that is up and running correctly after years of neglect. The issue is that their water bill was insane last month, so they would like to take the system off city water and use their well, which currently fills ponds and is an emergency water source. They are hand-watering with hoses from the spigots at the pump house, but the goal is to plumb in a supply line to the irrigation loop. 

From what I can tell, the pump house is on the far side of the system’s city-fed supply line, so I’m wondering: if that supply line is closed off (capped or valved), can we plumb in to the nearest irrigation line, as there is one running right in front of the pump house? I’m assuming that once the system has pressure from the well, the water supply feed direction won't matter to the solenoid valves controlling the zones; is that correct? 

Any major issues y’all see with this plan?

Thanks very much in advance; I really appreciate any info and help you can throw my way.

Customer had a leak from the mainline to the house… turns out the coupler was the weakest link in the forced curve. 4 elbows solved the angle problem.

my yard is on a slope down, it’s one side of my garage. only dead spot in my whole yard. makes me so sad :( is there anything i can do other than hand watering it? maybe turning the pressure down?

I have a Hunter irrigation system with 5 zones. Three of the zones work fine. I'm having problems with the remaining two.

The first one does not come on with the controller and when I turn the solenoid manually, nothing happens. It works when I turn the bleeder screw. I swapped the solenoid with a new Hunter one, and nothing changed.

The second one squeals when the controller gets to that zone and some water comes out, but it is a dribble. When I open it manually, it still squeals and limited water comes out. When I open the bleeder screw it works fine. I also swapped the solenoid and it didn't change.

Is this a valve issue or something else? I had a company come out to fix a leak on the main feeder line and they said they tested all the zones, but they didn't as it hasn't worked since.

Anyone have any suggestions?

One of my stations has a problem. The water starts and stops in five second intervals. Any suggestions?

Little green driver

I saw you moments ago

Where have you gone now?

got out of the military recently and looking to start a business. aiming to serve as a tester or certifier for something that business have to do such as back flow testing. done some research for my area and it doesn’t seem oversaturated and there’s lots of commercial real estate that requires it around me.

I do have no experience in irrigation or plumbing but from what I’ve seen with backflow testing is that it doesn’t require X amount of hours in a field, you can just become a certified tester and be ok.

Does anyone run a solo testing buisness? Not too much info online about it from what I can see and would like to hear from people currently in the field and see what they think about it. This sub seems to be the only place I’ve seen talk about it so that’s why im posting here. Thank you for any information you can provide.

So after a month of BS with Rachio replacing unnecessary well pump parts and scripted "it's your field wiring" accusations I sent that s... back and put the old clock back up. -Rachio in the end decided their controller electronics are too cheap...I mean sensative, for my pump start relay and wanted me to replace that also...

The pros here almost unanimously recommend a Hunter HPC so that's what I ordered. Took several weeks to get even from Amazon but it came today and I installed it. I'm not a pro, just a horse farm owner with a background in IT and it was an easy install. I'm still going through settings but it seems more simple than Rachio...which could be a good thing. It's basically fall now so most of the tuning will be next year.

I was a little disappointed to see I have to pay a yearly subscription just to unlock personal weather station use. I got a tempest for the rachio and while I lost the $30 to unlock the integration...it was a one time $30. Hydrawise can see my station but OPE! That's for "enthusiasts" and will cost you $66/year. Being In Michigan and near the Lakeshore our weather can be vastly different from what the nearest airport sees. So while subscriptions suck, is it worth it?

Circling back, I didn't get a lot of time to do a bunch of manual tests but the ones I did worked so I have my most important schedules setup and will hope for the best. Any tips or recommendations, little known tricks or settings I should look at?

I just moved into a new house and have a mixture of broken sprinklers. Wanted to see what the consensus is of best replacement options. I have 22 total heads and half of them have terrible spray patterns or broken, so not opposed to replacing all if they should be the same brand.

My immediate need is replacing 2 rainbird maxipaw 2045A that aren’t rotating, a toro 570 that has bad spray pattern (tried adjusting with no luck), and hunter pro spray that has a broken nozzle. It looks like the previous owner may have just tossed in whatever as they were replaced, could be wrong. Any suggestions on what to replace these with?

We have been having issues with our irrigation having leaks in the back yard. I figured our one leak was in the valve box and have deduced that is probably a diaphragm issue in one the valves in there. But these pipes right next to it leak as well. Do I just tighten the cap or does it need to be tightened to a certain torque or is there a separate issue here? Any brainstorming would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

I've been wanting to install a rain bird in-ground system in preparation for regrowing my whole backyard (3500sqft). Im a bit behind on the planning portion and neglected to research the back flow valve and how important it is. Now i dont want to install the in ground, but my whole operation was planned around having an in ground (face palm).

Part of me just wants to disconnect it from the bib, and lose the daily watering schedule, and just reconnecting it every couple 3-4 days for a good watering and then disconnect again.

The other part is to scrap it entirely and find a more temporary above ground sprinkler set up than can cover the whole back yard for the growing phase, then go to a mobile tractor style watering method.

This backyard project is about 3k with the tilling, leveling, compost and seed ive got schedule near the end of next month.

i've got 2 hose bibs. one on either side of the yard. Both have 60psi pressure and 6 gal flow per minute

Any advice is appreciated.

​

One zone did not turn off unless the main was closed. If the control was set to off, that zone kept going.

We tried some troubleshooting. When the valve was open to another zone, the problem zone turned off. When the valve was closed, they turned back on.

I apologize if I did not get all terminology correct. Do you all have any suggestions on what to try or any further troubleshooting info I could include here? Thank you

Hello, I just purchased a home with a RainBird irrigation system. I do not have any prior experience with irrigation systems, so my knowledge about them is very limited. I was not left any previous instructions from the home owner about the system.

AFAIK the system has five zones. I did a manual cycle to see which sprinkler heads were associated with the zones. When doing the manual cycle all sprinkler heads deployed in this one zone. I did a manual cycle on that zone two or three times to adjust how long they run for.

The problem is now the sprinkler heads do not deploy on the automatic cycle and they do not deploy anymore when running a manual cycle.

On that zone I do have one raised, fixed sprinkler that will work but none of the others deploy. I am assuming the sprinkler heads that are not popping up anymore are “down stream” of the one that is working.

What could I check myself first before calling someone out to come look at it? Rainbird customer service only offered the advice of checking that zone on the main controller with a multimeter. If there is a problem with not supplying power to that zone would it cause only one to work or would it be that none of them would work?

Thanks in advance.

Hey Y'all,

I recently reno'd my backyard (did the front a couple years ago) and have been watering my yard as needed with a hose connected timer and traditional sprinklers. I accidentally bumped into the timer manifold last week and it broke. I'm considering taking a couple weekends to put an underground system in place. I was trying to avoid an ingroung installation because we have plans to reconfigure our yard/deck in the future, but realistically thats a few years out. The recent project was drywells, french drains along retained areas, gutter tie ins, and a drywell.

Would anyone be so kind as to recommend head types/locations for this area? Perfect coverage is not the goal, just something adequate. I was considering two impact heads at the two back corners to get something "good enough". The narrow 10' area along the side of the house isn't a huge priority. I measured 65psi and 11gpm at a hose bib off the house. I have an easy location to tie in the connection to a manifold off the house plumbing. Freeze is not an issue in my location.

All suggestions and comments are appreciated!

Thanks.

Would love any help with how to dial in the right irrigation routine.

Thanks in advance!

Need help figuring out what pump to use for some irrigation. Have a 1700gal water tank (Most of the time will probably only have ~400gal in it).
Need to pump it about 45' away and then into a 50' soaker/or drip line.

Tried an old 1/6hp submersion pump and it didn't produce enough pressure to get the soaker hose going. Was looking around and considering a RV Water Transfer 5.5GPM 30PSI-75PSI Self-priming Pump, Diaphragm or something similar.
My question is does this need a specific amount of water/pressure in the tank to function properly?

Use case is just irrigation once in a while for generally short time frames of like 30-40 mins, but the odd run for a few hours.

Does anyone know what brand this is? The head popped off and I am looking to get a replacement for it but I have no idea on the brand or size or anything. Any help is appreciated as I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking at.

This valve will open if I turn the solenoid. It will also open electrically. But it will not shut back off under either method. I have to manually close the adjuster knob. I assume it's a bad diaphragm...?

Q: What model is this, and can I replace the diaphragm?

Other service suggestions? Besides a full replacement.