Tinkering with Irrigation

The hot weather is upon us and I have been out tinkering with the irrigation.
I thought I would check for overspray, adjust heads and work on adding drippers to pots.

You can adjust radius on sprinkler heads (somewhat) using a small screwdriver to turn the little
srew on the top of the sprinkler head/nozzle. This will adjust the throw of the water farther out or reduce it down a bit. My heads were throwing a lot of water onto the paving so in an effort to save water and avoid hitting walking folk I adjusted them down. I will now check periodically and see if the adjustment resulted in some of the plants not getting watered.

If you have a drip hose in, it is easy to add drip emitters and drip feeder tubes for added pots or plants. Only a hole puncher and parts are needed so this is an easy fix. To add a new drip hose and drip feeder tubes a valve with filter and pressure regulator is needed or you can run drip off of a hose bib with a battery operated 1 station controller (Gardena makes these). The slow watering is great for narrow areas and pots. I really like soaker hose too and it can be run in the same way.

As the garden has grown in and areas have been changed I have a few spots with plants blocking heads and one spot where a head waters nothing at all. That one was easy to fix. Using a tall threaded riser I just dug down and unscrewed the existing head and riser and put in the new riser with a cap for now so it can be used in future if needed.

The head that was blocked by a plant needed to have the riser extended up with a pop-up or shrub head on top so it can spray over the offending shrub. Not too pretty but it works. If I am worried about aesthetics I either move the head over or use a high-pop (taller head).

Other checks I have been doing are to work on leaky heads, clogged heads or drippers and leaky valves. Some of these are easy fixes- tightening screw on areas of heads or valves, using seal tape on threaded areas, removing nozzles and cleaning them out, and replacing worn or broken parts. Replacing valves is a pain and I usually have one of my contractor buddies come over and help me do those. I hate working on valve manifolds. ugh.

Overall, this work will help to save water, avoid water damage to areas and increase the efficiency of the irrigation system. I usually work on the system once a year about now then make small checks during the growing season to check for breaks.

The good part is that you get sprayed by water sometimes to cool you down!