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Water, water, everywhere

By Phil Barron ⋅ July 17, 2006 ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ Post a comment

As is usual with life, not everything on the weekend list got done. By the same token, some things that weren’t on the list at all did get accomplished. In this latter category falls yesterday’s installation of an inexpensive sprinkler station for the back yard. M purchased a Watering Made Easy sprinkler about a month ago after hearing Roger Cook tout its virtues on an episode of Ask This Old House. Of course, the thing still had to be put in the ground. My wife’s lazy-ass husband finally got around to it, and took pictures:

Mise en place, sprinkler installation edition. I was going to employ a small steel tub for holding dug-up dirt, but M suggested an old sheet instead. We decided to place the sprinkler inside the acute left (our left, your right) corner of the gravel bed rather than in the grassy yard.

Used the hoe to clear the gravel, dug a ten-inch hole, set sprinkler in position. Provisionally.

Now you see the unit with the little quick-connect adapter on. The instructions say to attach this to the hose rather than to leave it connected to the sprinkler; six of one, a half-dozen of the other, really. Leaving the adapter with the sprinkler means I have to twist it to connect the hose…but it also means I have one less object that might get lost. If it’s always in the ground, I’ll always know where it is.

Can you spot my mistake? I’ve replaced the dirt and gravel, but haven’t yet placed the connection protection shell over the hose connector. Bad on me, jumping the gun like that, but easily corrected.

More on this stage: The instructions say to refill the hole with three inches of dirt, then three inches of gravel, then more dirt up to the lip of the sprinkler head and connection shell. Be sure to tamp all down. Since we’re placing our sprinkler in a gravel bed, I left enough room at the top to cover the area with gravel. As you’ll see at the end, the unit looks right at home, right away. Had we installed it in the lawn proper, we’d have an area of bare dirt that woud gave to be seeded for future grass growth.

The connection shell now in its proper place. You place dirt in it, tamp it down, then top it with gravel up to the bottom of the connection adapter.

And here you see the hose connected. If you had the adapter already connected to the hose, you could have the water pressure on in advance; the adapter won’t let the water flow until the hose is attached to the sprinkler. That’s what the instructions claim, anyway. I wouldn’t know because I didn’t turn the water on until I had it already hooked up.

Pay attention now! This sprinkler can spray in an arc ranging from 30 to 300 degrees, or in a full 360 degree swing, but it can only be adjusted while the device is in operation. The device comes preset with a limited arc so you won’t get blasted in the face; just keep the hose connector portion of the unit between you and the sprinkler head (that is, position yourself behind the unit) and you’ll stay dry. To adjust the arc to the range you want, turn the dial beneath that active sprinkler head (I’m pointing to it in the picture) clockwise. The sprayer will turn from left to right, hit the right-hand limit you set for it, then snap back and start again.

Thar she blows! The documentation says that the length of the sprinkler’s spray can range from 15 to 35 feet, but it looked to me like it could go quite a bit farther. Still, the documented range is more than enough for our yard.

And this is the unit at rest, with the cover to the connection shell in place to keep out detritus. Note that it you keep the connection adapter attached to the unit as I did, then the connection shell will need to stick up out of the ground a little higher that it otherwise would in order to allow room for the adapter. Another advantage to planting this thing in the gravel bed; just push more gravel up around the shell and no one’s the wiser.

The unit we bought - the “Original” - cost about 40 bucks. The Watering Made Easy sprinklers are available at most home stores, or online. Strange as it may sound now, the company did not pay me to write this post.

Addendum: You’ll want to make sure that all the water is out of the unit before winter comes, of course. I suppose you could just put your lips together and blow, but the company offers a more seemly option:

Sprinkler Stations installed in freezing climates require “Winterizing” to prevent damage by water freezing and expanding inside of the sprinkler. The 7-10 ounces of water that remains in the sprinkler after use must be pumped out before it can freeze and damage the sprinkler. We offer a “Winterizer Kit” that includes a pump to remove the water and a small plug to place in the hose connection to prevent new water from entering, or you may choose to use your own method to remove the water.

The “Winterizer Kit” is listed at $1.99. Further upstream in the blog - yes, I’m speaking to you from the future, albeit just four months into the future - I show you what the kit looks like and how to use it.

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