Filed under: Necessitated Improvements
Last weekend (21 and 22 June), I rototilled the now dead yard, raked it out, and fixed the grade. Then I put some grass seed in the ground. I bought a park mix of Fescue, Rye, and Bluegrass from Rehm’s Nursery. Everything seems to be going well, the sprinklers work at keeping the soil moist, and I’ve setup a new program in the sprinkler computer to water twice a day.
I’m a little late seeding. For Fescues, I should probably have started in May after the last freeze. Cross your fingers, hopefully they’ll sprout up.
As mentioned in the previous post, replacing the water main meant cutting off the old sprinkler system, which was illegal anyhow. Sprinkler systems are required to have anti-siphon valves to keep water from the sprinkling system from draining back into the water source. The old sprinkler system was simply branched from the main line, no anti-siphon valves anywhere. Plus, the coverage was terrible. It was time to do something about it.
So, we took our Government Stimulus Keep The Economy Going™ check, and went down to Ewing Irrigation. I picked up a monstrous anti-drainback valve, good for at least a small golf course, because it was cheaper than buying five anti-siphon valves to put in the manifold at each valve.
I also ran 1 inch CPVC from the mainline (also now 1″ CPVC) to the valves. I did the manifolds by hand. Protip on manifolds, though: if you’ve bought threaded valves, do yourself a favor and put unions in before and after the valves, so that you can get them out without having to rebuild the manifold every time. I am going to have to dig up my valves to do that.
Forgive the dirt, it’s been pretty dusty out here without grass to hold anything down. The valves I bought are Hunter Industries PGVs. The brass valve you see is a drain for the whole system, so that I can drain it in the winter. The valves will open with or without pressure behind, so there’s an easy way to drain.
Since I have pretty lousy flow and good pressure (around 15 gallons per minute, but about 75PSI of pressure), I decided to go with a lower flow sprinkler head. Ewing sells Hunter products, so I went with the MP Rotator. They’re relatively low-cost, require next to no flow, and throw an extraordinary distance at high pressure. In the front, I went with the 2000s around the perimeter, and in the back, I went with 3000s on the perimeter, along with one 360° 3000 in the center, and an MP Corner next to the deck.
I ended up with 5 zones: one for the front sprinklers, one for the front drip system, two for the back sprinklers, one for the back drip system (shown above, watering the new trumpet vine. To control all of it, I needed a good computer. I ended up with a Hunter Pro-C valve controller. It will run up to three concurrent programs, and is expandable to 12 zones. I bought a single expansion card, which means that I only have 6 zones available, but that ought to do me fine. Eventually, I ought to consider buying the rain sensor, but that’ll wait.
After all the digging, gluing, and filling, I am sunburned as hell.
