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Last but not least, we sharpened our pencils ...
We’ve got a three quarter inch barbed elbow screwed into our head and then we just install that into the end of the Funny Pipe, place it in the trench at ground level and then secure it with a little soil. You don’t want to cover up your trenches quite yet at this point, but you do want to secure your head so you can test the system. And you can always cut a little extra of the flex pipe or as we call it, Funny Pipe, off if you need to adjust where the head is exactly.
Each one of these has a certain gallon per minute indicator. This one says 2.0 on it. They also have like a 2.0 low which will have 2.0A which means it just shoots lower. We don’t want those. You want to put a 2.0 on this head.
On this particular type of rotor you have a tool that you can stick down in the rotor, turn it sideways and it helps you pull the rotor out. And then you put your proper nozzle and get it lined up. This particular screw has a screw in here that tightens it and needs to be loosened up ...
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Installing Flex Pipe and Cleaning out System
Okay, when installing flex pipe, you can see that I have an orange flag there to my right and that's where the head is actually going to be. So I want to go up a couple of feet from that head and cut my PVC so that I’ll have a little bit of area to work with when I do have my flex pipe installed. So I can move it and adjust the head.
Always clean your pipe and your fittings and glue liberally. Now, in the case, we're using a one-inch tee that goes to a half-inch threaded. Some fittings are going to use three-quarter inch threaded. Once you get that glued in, then you're going to decide which fitting you need for the flex pipe.
These are barbed fittings. They're one-half inch barbed to either a half-inch or a three-quarter inch threaded male. I want to use a barbed in this particular case. And screw that in and just hand-tighten. And once you get that tight, you're going to take your flex pipe and press it ...
Okay, it’s time to put our drains in. Each year, most people want to put some sort of winterizing drain so that they don’t leave their system water filled over the winter. In this particular case, we’re going to put in some automatic drain. There’s pluses and negativities to automatic drains versus manual drains, but we’re going to let ours drain automatically.
So, I’m going to cut each valve after the valve. I’m going to cut the line and I’m going to put in a 1 inch to a ½ inch, female T. Of course, just like any other PVC fitting, you just want to clean your pipe real good and then glue it well. So that’s a 1 inch to a ½ inch female, because that is what our automatic drains fit into. You can get these at any Lowe’s or irrigation supply places, just a pressure drain that close off when the system is pressurized and they release when the system releases its pressure and they allow the system to drain.
So you just stick one of these ...
So now that we’ve got our trenches clean or fairly clean we’re just about ready to start laying our pipe out. So generally we’ll begin to lay the pipe out and put it right on top of the ground and put an end in. We’re using bell end pipe in this particular case, so we’ll lay that on top of the ground so it’s easier to glue. And once you get it laid out and ready to glue use your cleaner, your PVC cleaner and clean the bell end real well and then you clean the insert end also. And then depending on the temperature that day you’ll have to wait a little while to allow that cleaner to dry. It usually takes a few seconds in warm weather. We are using quick dry glue in this case, which is a blue in color, so we can make sure we get a good even coat. Be liberal with your glue and when you put it in you insert and twist. So then when you’re ready to put your T’s in you just cut your length of pipe and use the same method to glue that in.
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Install Backflow Connecting to Main
Okay, so we're going to look at installing a backflow preventer. Once again, check your local laws and regulations on plumbing. Sometimes this is a phase that a licensed plumber needs to do, but every city and state code if different.
In our case, we need a backflow preventer. Some need a more complicated backflow preventer, more sophisticated. Ours is a fairly simple requirement, so we want to go ahead and put a brass backflow preventer in.
This is a threaded backflow preventer, so we're going to tighten our threaded fittings into each side. Make sure they're fairly tight. You don’t necessarily have to put these in a vice to tighten them because you can actually break the pipe by doing that. So as long as you are putting the Teflon tape onto the threads and tightening it fairly tight, you should be fine. And this is what's going to our main waterline. So once you've got it taped and tightened, then we're just ...
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Does billing, scheduling, estimates, proposals, contracts and more. LawnPro will keep up with who to mow each day. It will also let you re-arrange visits if you can't make it or it rains.
This is your solenoid right here and a quarter turn opens it, once there is pressure on it, and a quarter turn closes it. So if your solenoid goes bad you can unscrew this and replace the whole solenoid. But if this inside goes bad then you can take this right here, stick it on there and close the manual valve that closes the whole thing off.
We also have a manual cutoff to the entire system, which is put before the backflow valve. It’s just a regular manual ball valve and it’s kind of low in the ground in this particular instance, so we’re going to add a piece of four inch corrugated pipe so that we can reach down deeper than the depth of our actual box, our valve box there and turn that off.
So there you see the little pipe. We’ve cut it to fit in place and over the valve, the manual cutoff. And then we’re going to bury that at the height of the dirt or soil or grass that we need.
Assembling the valve box or installing the valve box is fairly straight forward. Usually there is a little bit of cutting involved in order to fit the box over your pipes. Sometimes you have to cut out a piece of a side, or sometimes you don’t have to cut out anything if the pipes are deep enough in the ground. But in our case our holes are perfect for our situation and we just cut out the slivers of plastic and they fit right in over our pipe. And then you will make your final placement after your valves are fully installed.
So, now we are ready to start out valve box. We’re going to show this in close to real time because it’s a fairly important part of the process and one of the more technical parts. So, here I am cutting 3 to 4 inch pieces of Schedule 40 High Pressure PVC Pipe so that I can use them as connectors to my T’s and elbows when putting together the three valves that we have for this system. Of course, you’ll want to clean each piece before assembling ...
Making and Digging Trenches
Once you've completed laying out your heads, you're going to want to mark out where you're trenching will be. So right here we've got it marked out with orange paint. And usually when we need double pipe, we mark out two lines. And then when we need a single pipe, we mark out one, so we know if the trench needs to be a little deeper or a little wider in one area or another. And then just mark your corners to cut where your heads are going to go to.
So now that we're ready to trench, you want to make sure that you have a proper piece of trenching equipment. In this case, we're using a mini skid steer with a trench attachment.
Now in different frosts zones we're going to have different depths that we need to achieve. In the zone that we are in, which is Zone 7, our frost zone doesn’t get below six inches. So you need to check your codes and your laws for your area to where you need to be, as far as depths.
So we're going to achieve about a 10-inch depth for ...