Saturday Is a Special Day
Are you ready to laugh? At me, I mean.
Last year I got our sprinklers all in, except for our little flower bed in the front. I had stubbed it with a pipe so all I needed to add was a drip line for the plants. Then this spring I decided that I needed an extra part to make it work (a pressure reducer, if you care, so all that pressure going through one tiny area wouldn’t blow out the pipe). So I went and got the parts, which required several fittings to make the right pipes connect. Then on Saturday I had to dig a short distance from the flower bed from the main line and add the fittings there. I hooked everything back up, turned on the water, and… nothing happened. I realized that I had left the valve closed at the main box. I went back to open it and discovered that I had put the pressure reducer on that end of the line last year. So I wasted the money on the parts, I wasted the time on the digging, and then the drip line didn’t seem to be working anyway.
I called my dad, and he suggested that having the extra pressure reducer on the line was maybe making the pressure too low for the water to bleed out of the drip line. So I cut it off and hooked things up again. Still no dice. I knew it had water in the line, but nothing was happening. After some discussion with neighbors, it appears that line doesn’t actually drip the water, but you have to add some little drip lines or whatever right at the location of the plants themselves, for things to work (this was not explained by the guys who sold me the parts). So in the end I bought parts I didn’t need, wasted time hooking them up, and then didn’t even get the parts that I did need. And it was all done on the day I was supposed to be running the marathon but couldn’t because I messed up my knee. Happy day!
Last year I got our sprinklers all in, except for our little flower bed in the front. I had stubbed it with a pipe so all I needed to add was a drip line for the plants. Then this spring I decided that I needed an extra part to make it work (a pressure reducer, if you care, so all that pressure going through one tiny area wouldn’t blow out the pipe). So I went and got the parts, which required several fittings to make the right pipes connect. Then on Saturday I had to dig a short distance from the flower bed from the main line and add the fittings there. I hooked everything back up, turned on the water, and… nothing happened. I realized that I had left the valve closed at the main box. I went back to open it and discovered that I had put the pressure reducer on that end of the line last year. So I wasted the money on the parts, I wasted the time on the digging, and then the drip line didn’t seem to be working anyway.
I called my dad, and he suggested that having the extra pressure reducer on the line was maybe making the pressure too low for the water to bleed out of the drip line. So I cut it off and hooked things up again. Still no dice. I knew it had water in the line, but nothing was happening. After some discussion with neighbors, it appears that line doesn’t actually drip the water, but you have to add some little drip lines or whatever right at the location of the plants themselves, for things to work (this was not explained by the guys who sold me the parts). So in the end I bought parts I didn’t need, wasted time hooking them up, and then didn’t even get the parts that I did need. And it was all done on the day I was supposed to be running the marathon but couldn’t because I messed up my knee. Happy day!
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