Sprinklin’, forgettin, hurtin
Wohoo, we just crossed 20 thousand blog hits. Tiny on an internet scale but big in my book. Thanks.
It was the most laborious three day that I can recall for a long time, probably rivaling the tile installation projects. Before the weekend I had set the ambitious goal of having one circuit completely installed, the timer in place and a pipe run under the driveway. Well two out of three isn’t bad.
On Friday after work I bought 22 10 foot sections of pipe along with a few odds and ends I thought I would need to complete phase one. The forecast for the weekend was very cold by Florida standards, lows in the 40’s over night with highs barely crossing into the 60’s. Not ideal but better than 95 and humid for sure. Saturday morning it was actually cold enough that there was frost on the ground. The thermometer read 40 degrees so I was a bit surprised to see frost. I was worried we would have landscape carnage like last year from a freeze. Luckily it stayed just warm enough to keep any of our plants from taking a hit.
So I waited till the frost cleared before heading outside. Phase 1 was probably going to be the most difficult phase. It all was going to be dug by hand since it was right around the house going up the hill that the house is built on as opposed to the power trencher I plan to use for the rest of it. Phase 1 also had tricky sprinkler placing. We had to go under the landscape border with short pieces of pipe and then use funny pipe for the last 18 inches or so. What the hell is funny pipe you ask? No it isn’t something you put stuff into to smoke and feel “funny”.
Funny pipe is black pliable pipe made by Toro. It can be cut to length and then pushed over these barbed connectors. These connectors screw into the sprinkler or threaded pvc connection. There are no clamps or anything else needed. I was skeptical of their ability to hold under pressure. Originally I had ideas of doing long funny pipe runs into the beds, luckily I read up on it Saturday morning and found that they didn’t recommend going more than 18 inches with funny pipe because of pressure loss problems. The reason you use funny pipe is it makes sprinkler heads much more resilient. If you have a sprinkler head directly attached to rigid pvc, if you run over it with something heavy enough, there is a good chance you will break the sprinkler head, the riser or the pvc pipe. A funny pipe connection is flexible so if the same situation occurs, there is give on the head, preventing breakage. From what I read, almost all connections are done with funny pipe for this reason.
Anyway, around 10 o’clock Saturday morning the shovel hit the dirt. I started digging my trench. Even though it was quite chilly out, I soon warmed up from the activity, losing my sweatshirt within the first half hour. The digging, while tough, could have been much worse. Once you got through the top layer of grass it was sand underneath. I had only one major obstacle to go under, the drainpipe I installed years ago to route rainwater away from the downspout. I was able to dig under it with minimal fuss. So around I went, up the hill around the back corner of the pool and back around to the other side. Digging on the steep hills around the pool was tricky. I got to the opposite back corner of the house from where I started. The funny pipe reading that I did made me redesign on the fly how I was going to go into the landscape beds. Instead of running funny pipe right from the main pvc run, I had to extend pipe into the bed and then connect funny pipe to it, meaning I need T fittings that I did not have.
I was tired and needed a break. I got that far in the span of maybe two hours. Good progress in my book. After lunch, Ali offered to take over digging while I ran out to Home Depot to get what I needed. I felt bad having her dig because I knew it was tough work but she insisted she would be fine. So off I went to the Home Depot in Bonita Springs, the closest one to us. That store had a piss poor selection of fittings. They hardly had anything for 1 inch connections. I was trying to improvise and use a reducer to go down to 3/4″ pipe but even then, couldn’t find everything I needed. I got angry and eventually said f it, and sped off to the Home Depot off Pine Ridge Road, a good 20 miles away. In contrast, this store had a great selection and I got everything I needed within 10 minutes. Unfortunately my trip to two stores kept me away from home longer than I hoped, I felt bad about leaving Ali to dig for all that time. I expected to come back to her collapsed from exhaustion, I had no idea how far she would have gotten.
You can imagine my surprise when I pull up and see the trench dug all the way around to the front of the house at it’s ending point along with sections of pipe neatly laid out along the trench to facilitate installation, wow, awesome! I praised Ali for her hard work and told her how I got delayed. Since the trench was all done we were ready to lay pipe!
Laying the pipe wasn’t all that hard. The worst part was spending all that time on my knees. The measurements didn’t have to be real exact since the pipe itself was flexible. The only parts we had to be careful with was when joints were going up/down inclines/declines. Those connections we put together dry, got the angle correct and then drew a line across the connection with a magic marker so we knew how they should line up when it was glued. It was getting late in the day and Ali was going to a humane society “Pet Ball” that night so she bagged out at around 4. I did another 30 feet of pipe and sprinkler connections before I bagged. The stopping point was about halfway across the back of the pool. I thought we made great progress for day 1 and thought that it was realistic that on Sunday we could have water going through the system. I did minimal cleanup, leaving most of the materials outside since I knew I would be using everything tomorrow.
This “Pet Ball” thing is the Humane Society’s biggest fundraiser. Ali bugged me about going for a long time but the tickets are 300 dollars EACH. I love pets but not that much. Well a couple weeks ago she told me that the Humane Society offered her tickets for half price, 150 each, still extremely steep to me. When she told me about it I again balked, told her if she wants to go, she can but I had the outgoing money for the sprinklers, zoom bleaching and Toyota starter repairs on my mind, I didn’t want to pile on. Plus this was before we knew about the healthy tax return we were getting. Plus I was a bit annoyed that the Humane Society wouldn’t offer her a free pass, I mean wtf, she just busted her ass for six months organizing a race that raised nearly six grand for them, they can’t throw her a free ticket or two for all those countless unpaid hours? I thought it was kind of shitty. Well Ali, in typical Ali fashion, didn’t care much about the dollars and decided to go.
It is a very formal event where high rollers spend huge money on auction items with the proceeds going directly to the Humane Society. Ali borrowed a fancy red gown from Michelle and spent well over an hour primping, putting her hair in curlers and doing her makeup to the fullest. The effort was worth it, she looked great. I took a few pictures of her before she went. I felt a little guilty about not accompanying her but she already made arrangements to hangout with one of the humane society employee’s wife. She pulled out and I had the evening to myself.
I had a fine little time on my own. I ordered pizza that Nicki and I went out and picked up. Then I sat on the couch and watched Beer League, the movie with Artie Lange from the Stern show. It was one of those movies that Ali deemed she didn’t want to watch. (evidently she did her typical pre-movie screening online and saw there was nudity – gasp) Well anyway, the flick wasn’t bad, wasn’t great. It actually had too much swearing. I am a fan of swearing mind you, but as with anything else, if you do it to much, it loses it’s meaning. There was so much swearing in this movie that it just lost it’s effectiveness. My favorite character in the movie is an old softball player named Dirt. He had most of the lines that made me laugh. Overall the movie was below my expectations although there were a decent amount of funny scenes, C+.
I think it was on Saturday night where my brain farts almost caused a serious issue. Ali told me that Nicki needed her Advantix. Advantix is that liquid you put on a dog’s back to protect them from fleas and ticks for a month. I heard her say Advantix but instead I went back and pulled out a Sentinel which is a pill that a dog gets for heartworm, also once a month. I took the Sentinel out, put it on a plate mixed with a small amount of cat food and Nicki devoured it in seconds. I told Ali that the Sentinel was all gone proudly! She said, “What, you mean Advantix??”, confused with how I Nicki would ingest Advantix. No, Sentinel! I said and then it hit me. I f’d up. My brain farts that make me do things like put milk in the bird water dish, walk into rooms and forget why I was there and various other annoying, yet trivial issues up to this point, now has resulted in me giving Nicki a monthly dose of medicine that she just received the week prior. Ali was freaked out, worried that this extra dosage could have some sort of negative, serious side effect. She scoured the net for info and finally came across a phone number to call. I outwardly tried to make it seem like I was sure Nicki would be fine but inside I was a bit worried and upset with myself that my brain lock had caused something like this. Ali got a lady on the phone that asked her various questions. Thankfully it was determined that there shouldn’t be a serious problem other than maybe an upset stomach. (which we saw the next day with an unusually high amount of number 2’s) I felt bad about my f up. It scares me what the future holds, seriously.
After watching Beer League I sat down and WoW’d until Ali came home. It was a nice relaxing night for me after a day of busting hump. Ali said she really liked the ball and had a lot of fun. She said next year she wants me to go. Ok, great.
Sunday morning I got up with a spring in my step even though my body was aching. I was excited to get the project ramped up. My optimism went south when I looked outside and saw a steady rain coming down. I immediately thought how all the stuff I left out was now soaked and how all the exposed dirt will now be mud, hooray! I checked the forecast. The rain was supposed to blow out shortly but the high was only supposed to hit 60 with a lot of wind. I figured, ok , well I guess I will WoW it till the rain stops. That plan got cut short when we lost power for a couple hours, due to the high wind I assume. So I passed the time reading some of my Wired magazine and wandering around the house doing little things here and there. Finally the rain stopped and I ventured outside.
It was very brisk and felt even colder with the wind but I had pipe to get in the ground. On Saturday night I tried to save some time by preinstalling the funny pipe connectors into the sprinkler heads and threaded, reducing 90’s. When I put my first sprinkler in of the day I took a quick look and noticed that it was backwards, it would be spraying into the pool area instead of away from it. Then just as a pre-caution I checked the ones that were already in the ground. The two I did myself on Saturday were also backwards. Damn it. Luckily, correcting it just meant turning the sprinkler 180 degrees, I’m just glad I caught it when I did.
So I methodically worked my way around, Ali came out to join me as I was getting to the far corner of the pool. We had a good system going and had the final piece glued in place by 2:30! We both admired our handywork, it looked damn good to us. However we had to wait two hours until we could test it. I spent the time doing prelim work for mounting the control box and wiring it up and constructing my water cannon to drill under the driveway. The control box wiring went ok although I wasn’t able to make the wires looks quite as nice as I wanted. The connections have to be sealed in these big grease cap fittings to keep moisture out and the length of the manifold didn’t give my enough slack from each valve to route them neatly along the pipe layout. Constructing the water cannon involved cementing two 10 foot pieces of pipe together and cementing in the nozzle on one end and the hose fitting on the other.
While the water cannon fittings were curing, I dug out on both sides of the driveway, giving me a trench to ram the pipe through. The theory is the water pressure clears out the dirt as you jam the pipe through. This method is what is used to get under small things like sidewalks, however I was trying to go under a 17 foot driveway, I didn’t know what to expect.
2:30 came and it was time to test our handywork. Ali and I were both nervous. I applied pressure to the manifold and then carefully opened the control valve by hand. You could see the pipe shake as it filled with water pressure. Then within a few seconds, the closest sprinklers spit and then popped up and started spraying beautifully. We were stoked and we walked around the back of the house to the front, inspecting each head. Every sprinkler was spraying strongly and in the correct direction. Finally we made it around to the front of the house to inspect the last sprinkler which just like the others, was spraying great. That is awesome, it means we had plenty of line pressure to power all 11 heads. Then, just as Ali and I were basking in the glow of our success, the head lost pressure and went down. Oh, oh. I quickly walked around the side of the house, knowing that either the well pump shut off or there was a break in the line, which would suck. It was the latter. A joint for the tee at the second sprinkler had popped apart and was gushing water. Quickly I scrambled and turn off the water. I was in disbelief that the pipe could have come apart once it was cemented. I was relieved to see it didn’t. It came apart because someway, somehow, I forgot to cement that one joint. Ok, easy enough to fix, dry the connection off, cement it and wait another two hours.
During the second two hour wait I was ready to find out if the water cannon would work.. I stuck the water cannon in, turned on the water and started jamming the pipe back and forth. It was working great. Each thrust back and forth the pipe would go considerably further. I could see the water bubbling up from the stress relief cut. I was over halfway under the driveway until I started having issues. At that point each thrust went less and less. Eventually it got stuck. I couldn’t move it in or out. F. I turned, pushed and pulled on the pipe as hard as I could, it wouldn’t budge. Son of a bitch. I assumed that maybe I got caught on some concrete or something. Then I had the idea to make another mini-water cannon by just sticking a hose inside a length of pipe and come in from the other side, hoping to blast through whatever was obstructing my progress. I was able to feed the secondary cannon in but it did nothing to free up my original pipe. My next idea was to feed in the secondary cannon on the same side as the original, hoping that I could widen up the hole. It fed in easily to a certain point, then just like that, bang it was stuck as well. I pulled on the hose but it was locked in tight. (yea I know these descriptions sound like a bad porn script but oh well)
So now I was really f’d, I had the water cannon and water cannon junior both stuck. No amount of pulling was going to break them free. I had assumed that I would just have to cut the pipes and leave them buried under the driveway but then I had one last idea. I would attach one of the steel woven dog leads that I used to straighten the oak trees and attach them to the pipe and the truck and have at it. My assumption was the pipe/hose would break but it was worth a shot.
So I wrap the lead around the original water cannon pipe and then back the truck into position. I slowly move forward with the truck until the slack is taken up. The wire goes taut and the wheels start to spin. I throw dirt for a bit and stop. Ali said the pipe actually moved, wow. So I back up, turn the wheel to reset the back tire position and go again. It goes taut and I start to spin the wheels but I keep on it, I see in the rear view mirror that the pipe actually was coming out! I pulled it all the way out, intact! I couldn’t believe it didn’t break. It gave me a sense of just how strong those cemented connections are, damn. Well now I was feeling lucky so I hooked up to the hose of cannon 2. I was sure the hose would snap but what the hell. As I took up the slack the hose stretched painfully. Ali stood way back to stand free of any recoil. Then again, the hose broke free and came out, amazing. I felt very fortunate to get both items out. I wrote off the failed experiment to just being unlucky hitting an obstruction. I vowed to try again on Monday, lower on the driveway where it was less wide. Ali backfilled the trenches I dug by the driveway. I was wiped out from trying to pull the cannons out. Enough time had passed that we could do test number two of the sprinklers. well Ali said we should wait a bit longer but I assured her that the joint should be sufficiently cured.
Test number two went flawlessly, everything held together this time. We walked around for awhile inspecting the spray. It was hard to get a good sense of the spray pattern because it was very windy, blowing water all over the place. Even so, it was thrilling to see the fruits of our labor. I was content to leave it at that for the day but Ali asked if we wanted to start backfilling the trench. I agreed.
By now it was getting late in the day, it was very windy and we were working on the shady side of the house, making it feel quite cold. Backfilling was quite the pain in the ass. First we tried pulling the intact pieces of sod off the pile and then shoveling/raking the left over dirt into the trench and place the sod back in, filling in gaps best we could. Ali was down on the ground trying to delicately place stuff, I was shovelling and raking. It was monotonous and going very slow. Eventually I dropped down on my knees and was pushing dirt around with my hands. We only got down the side of the house before wrapping it up. I told her I would work on backfilling the rest myself on Monday.
Ali headed off to work on Monday and I headed outside shortly afterward. Again it was very chilly. First I wanted to get the control box all setup. I already had it hung on the wall, already had the wires run up to it, all I needed to do was basically cut the wires to length, route them thru a piece of pvc to the controller and make the connections. Trying to cut sheathing off wires with cold hands is not fun. I struggled through it and got the valve for my first circuit connected. I just wanted to test that one first. I set the box for manual, fire it off and nothin… What the hell? I inspect my connections, readjust them, try again, nothing. Hmmmm, so I turn my attention to my connections. The common wire connection was a mess with 6 wires getting tied into one lead so I thought maybe that was not working. I already had encased the wire nut with a grease cap so I had to pull it out of the goo to inspect it. Well it looked ok. I squeezed it a bit and tried again. Nothing. I was getting pissed. Then I noticed the little lcd on the controller had an icon that lit up that said PWR OFF. It has battery backup so even without AC the display works. PWR OFF? It is plugged into the wall. I did some jiggling of the power cord and the message cleared and then came back again. What I eventually determined was that the top outlet was flaky, if you didn’t have the plug in just right it would not get power. THAT must be my problem. So I get a splitter and run the controller and the water softener off the bottom outlet, problem solved. By this time I had my original wiring all pulled apart so I just wired up the one valve just to verify I was in the clear. I hit the button, nothing. Now I am borderline insane. WTF is going on? I rip the controller off the wall, move it over right to the valves and plug the solenoid DIRECTLY into the controller to rule out any cabling issues in between them. It still doesn’t f’in work!! I have run out of ideas, clueless as to why the controller which worked when I tested it on the valves without water, no longer worked. And then I noticed something. The common wire was not in the right spot on the controller. I had removed and reinserted this wire at least 10 times, all ten times I put it in the WRONG SPOT. I was happy to figure this out but extremely pissed at myself for being so stupid at the same time. I put the wire in the right spot, bang it works like a champ. What should have taken me a half hour took two hours of f’ing around instead. Not a good start to the day. I got the box back on the wall, hooked all of the valves up and tested each one, they all work, great.
Next up, water cannon attempt number two. I moved down the driveway to a spot that was maybe two feet narrower. I dug my trenches, positioned my pipe and blasted away. It was an instant replay of the day before. I got about halfway and it got stuck like it was in cement. Again, no amount of pulling would free it. So once again I hook up the truck to attempt to pull it out. This time it wouldn’t budge, eventually I got frustrated and instead of easing the slack out, I built up a bit of monetum. This technique snapped the steel cable while the pipe remained intact, damn. So I had to admit defeat and cut the pipe off in the trench and bury it, forever entombing it beneath the driveway, oh well. My theory is that after a certain point, all the dirt that is displaced by the water just fills in behind the head, when it does there is just nowhere for the pipe to go. It would definitely work for something like a sidewalk, but for a driveway, some other method must be used. Well all that meant was that for the front yard circuit, we are going to have to go the long way around the back of the house, around the other side and up front.
The last part of the this phase of the project was back filling. Given our experience on Sunday, I was not looking forward to it since to do the first 80 or 90 feet took two people an hour of misery to do. I still had at least 160 feet to fill. I decided to start at the manifold side and work back towards where we finished. At first I was trying to use the same techique we did on Sunday, carfully separating the sod from loose dirt and then carefully placing the sod back in place. Well I soon realized this just wasn’t going to work. I figured what the hell, we have sprinklers now, grass will grow back in on it’s own quickly, I’m not f’in around. So out came the rake.
My techique was this, chop at the sod clumps to break them up and then just rake all the shit into the trench and then pound it flat with the back of the shovel. It went much faster that way and in the long term would be just as good as the tedious method we used before. Granted, all that raking, especially up the steep hills wasn’t fun but it beat the alternative. I was able to have it all wrapped up well before Ali got home from work. She was amazed to see that I got it all done. I proudly showed her the sprinkler controller mounted and functional along with my superior backfill job.
The three days were tough on my 39 year old bones. My hands are dried out, cut up and swollen from all of the pushing, pulling, twisting an digging. My knees were not receptive to being kneeled on so often but I’m not limping. All the other major muscle groups just sort of have a dull ache. But hey, it was worth it. I can’t wait till it is all done. It felt good to take on a big project and have it at least so far, come out as well as you envisioned. Of course I took lot of pics that will be up later today.