How To Install And Irrigation System Controller
An in-footing sprinkler system is by far the easiest and most effective way to water your backyard. You can program it to automatically water the grass on a regular schedule, which means you won't have to elevate out the hose and sprinkler every few days. And a properly designed sprinkler system provides total coverage, ensuring there aren't whatsoever grassy areas that are left either parched and dry out, or over-watered to the indicate of drowning. By metering out a precise, consistent amount of water, automatic sprinklers not only brand information technology easier to maintain a lush, green lawn they'll also save yous money by not wasting water.
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In-ground sprinkler systems are available from professional contractors, but they're not cheap, costing on average between $2,500 and $3,500 for a one-quarter acre lot. Still, in that location are DIY sprinkler systems now available that can salve yous up to 40 percentage over a professional installation. Some yous can even control with an app on your smart phone. And the sprinkler components are affordable, readily available, and easier than ever to gather.
If you want to know how to install your own sprinkler system, though, here are the basics to know.
Check the Water Pressure
It's important to kickoff decide the h2o force per unit area at an outdoor faucet, using a unproblematic pressure gauge. Then, use a v-gallon saucepan to measure how much h2o your home'due south plumbing delivers in one minute. Send the water pressure level information to the sprinkler manufacturer you have chosen, along with a sketch of your property, including all critical dimensions.
In return, you'll receive a organisation layout and a list of all the sprinkler parts you'll need, including those not sold by the manufacturer, merely bachelor at most hardware stores. For this installation, we used Rain Bird, a company that's been designing and manufacturing irrigation products since the early 1930s. The organisation layout they provided divided our backyard into zones, each controlled by a zone valve. In this case, to ensure total coverage, there were eight zones and 48 sprinkler heads. The cost: $1,500.
In warmer climates, you tin can use PVC piping to supply water to the sprinkler heads. Here, we used polyethylene pipe, which is more flexible and able to withstand freeze-thaw cycles. Consult the local building department to see if you need a edifice allow to install a sprinkler system.
The hardest function of installing a DIY sprinkler system is laying all the underground h2o-supply piping. That is, if you dig the trenches by hand. Opting for the quicker, easier route, nosotros rented a piping-pulling machine for $180 a mean solar day, which saved an immeasurable corporeality of time and toil.
Nosotros also bought some self-tapping saddles, which provide the quickest way to tap into the polyethylene piping without having to cut or drill the pipage. Just push the saddle downwards onto the pipage at each sprinkler head location, then twist the handle to puncture the pipage, so water can menstruation to the sprinkler.
Finally, every sprinkler system needs a backflow preventer to keep the sprinkler arrangement from contaminating the home's potable h2o supply. A standard, surface-level backflow preventer will work, just it must be placed 12 in. to a higher place the highest point of the thou. Here, we installed a reduced-pressure backflow preventer and installed information technology in the basement where the system will be drained each winter.
Top Rated Sprinklers
Running the Pipes
If digging the trenches past hand, dig the main water-supply lines first, followed by the shorter co-operative lines. The trenches should be at to the lowest degree 6 in. deep, only eight to 10 in. deep will give y'all more room to work.
If you lot've rented a piping puller, brainstorm past attaching the end of the polyethylene piping to the machine'south blade. When running a primary line, it'due south best to wrap the low-voltage electrical cable around the pipage and pull both at the same time. With the pipe connected, start the automobile moving frontwards and lower the blade into the ground.
Adjacent, drill through your home'due south rim joist, and run copper pipage and electrical cable through the pigsty and to the basis. Make the conversion from copper to PVC at ground level with a threaded connector. Run the main PVC line, forth with the cable, to the first zone-valve location. Assemble the zone valve above ground, and and then cement them to the underground piping.
Install a plastic, inline bleed plumbing fixtures on the downstream side of each valve and connect the cablevision wires. Our cablevision had 10 wires and each zone valve had two lead wires. Connect one of each pair of valve atomic number 82 wires to the white common wire, which will service all of the valves. Join a different color-coded wire to the other lead of each zone valve. Continue making connections in this way until yous've reached the last valve. With all the valves connected and wired, install the valve boxes then backfill the trenches.
The feed line needs a drain installed at its lowest bespeak. Thread a brass drain plumbing equipment into the threaded finish of a PVC tee and install the tee down at 45 degrees. Dig a small depression nether the drain, and fill up it with sand and gravel.
Start the pipe puller moving frontward and settle the blade into the turf. The blade will shimmy the pipe down into the ground.
Gather the zone valves to a higher place ground, then connect them to the undercover pipes. Install a bleed fitting to each valve.
Attach i of every valve'south lead wires to the white common wire and connect a colored wire to each remaining lead.
Install a brass bleed valve at each depression spot of the feed line. Thread the valve into the tee with Teflon tape.
To tunnel under walkways, attach a pointed sluice nozzle to a length of PVC pipe. Connect a hose fitting to the opposite cease of the piping, so dig shallow trenches on either side of the walkway. Connect a garden hose to the pipe, turn the water on loftier and push the nozzle under the walkway to blast a hole clear through to the other side.
Use a sluice piping to tunnel under sidewalks. The brass fitting is sold at hardware stores and home centers.
Polyethylene pipe is joined together with affront fittings, which can be secured with mutual hose clamps, but stainless steel crimp rings are easier to install. Sever the pipage with a scissors-style tubing cutter, then slide the rings onto the pipe and crimp each one with pliers.
Use a pair of scissors-type tubing cutter to slice polyethylene pipe. It's quick and easy to use, and leaves a clean border. Slide the crimp ring onto each pipe and insert the barb plumbing equipment.
Slide a crimp ring onto each pipe and insert the barb fitting. Slide on the rings and crimp them tight with pliers.
Draw the crimp rings together with crimp-ring pliers.
Installing the Heads
The sprinkler heads tin can be connected to the pipes in several ways. If drainage isn't an event, install a 90-caste elbow with a affront plumbing fixtures on one finish and a female thread on the other.
If drainage isn't required, use a 90-caste elbow at the sprinkler head. Thread a riser into the peak of the elbow. If the sprinkler head is located in a low spot on the holding, and needs to be drained occasionally, and so install a 90-degree bleed elbow instead
If you're at a low spot and demand seasonal drainage, install a ninety-caste drain ell instead.
To drain a depression spot under a sprinkler head, use a 90-caste drain elbow. Be sure to position information technology upright with the threads at the elevation.
Now, connect a sprinkler head to the elbow with a threaded riser, or brand an offset swing pipe. To brand a swing-pipe connexion, thread ane 90-degree elbow into the drain plumbing fixtures and another into the bottom of a sprinkler head. Utilize Teflon tape on the threads. Then, join the ii elbows with a length of 3/8-in. polyethylene swing pipe.
Connect the elbow to the sprinkler head with 3/viii-in. swing pipage. Use Teflon tape, but no crimp rings. The fit is and so snug that it doesn't need a crimp band. End by backfilling the hole while tamping downward the soil every 4 in.
Backfill the pigsty 4 in. at a time and tamp the soil with a rubber mallet. Then superlative the bare soil with sod or grass seed.
When tapping into a continuous piping run, utilize the self-tapping saddle valve mentioned earlier.
Press the saddle valve'due south collar around the piping and snap it together. You will feel information technology click when it locks in place. To connect the head, install either a swing pipe or a threaded riser in the top of the fitting
When the pipe is direct under a sprinkler, connect the head with a threaded riser. We equipped this system with three types of heads: spray heads for small grassy sections, rotary heads for the larger areas, and a bubbler for the bloom garden. The bubbler sends a trickle of water through 1/8-in. tubing to various spots in the garden.
A bubbler caput is peculiarly designed to soak a flowerbed without wetting the foliage.
Final Touches
Local plumbing codes will dictate how to tap into your abode's water system, merely the installation shown hither is adequately typical. Cut into the 3/four-in. water line just across the meter and upsized to 1-in. pipe for the sprinkler system. Then, presently later on the tap, install a full-menstruation ball valve.
Install a full-flow brawl valve so you lot can service the backflow preventer without shutting off the menses of water to the entire house. Later the ball valve, install a brass nipple and the reduced-pressure backflow preventer. Run pipe from the backflow preventer to the pipage installed through the rim joist.
Install the reduced-force per unit area backflow preventer right after the ball valve. This blazon of preventer volition occasionally back surge, and then y'all'll need a catch basin with an air gap underneath information technology. Piping the catch basin to a nearby flooring bleed with one-in. pipe. You'll also need a bleed valve in gild to drain the overhead line in winter.
Install an air-gap catch basin on the unit and run a full-size drainpipe to the nearest flooring drain. Mount the control panel to a nearby wall. Run the cablevision into the panel, strip the wires and connect them according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Run the zone-valve cablevision to the control box. Connect the wires according to the installation instructions.
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How To Install And Irrigation System Controller,
Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/a724/install-sprinkler-system-underground/
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