How to repair a broken sprinkler valve

by Garage

“Binks, you need to mow the lawn.”

I’ve been hearing this for the past few days now, but have been putting it off because I’m in the heat of the austin wedding season and people want their proofs, prints, and albums. It’s not like we have the worst yard in the neighborhood, but Sam had his yard mowed 3 days ago, and now we have that weird lawn line between our two properties. His is short, and mine is long. Kind of like hair from the 70′s – some had it short, and others had it long.

As I’m pushing the mower across the front yard, I hear the whirring of the gears and feel the little bits of cut grass flying up against my lets. Working from the back to the front and side to side, I get a good sweat going in the early summer evening, pushing the old-school reel mower. But then I notice that I’m hearing the distinctive reel mower sound, but not feeling any grass. I look down, and see that the front section is still green, but not nearly as long as the back section. The dirt under the lawn is dry and hard, too. This section isn’t getting watered by my lawn sprinkler system . Crap. As much as I hope this is a simple sprinkler timer issue I know this is going to end up with me, a shovel, and a big muddy hole in the ground.

There’s not much use in me cutting grass that doesn’t need to be mowed,right? So, I put the push mower away, and head over to my RainBird timer box. Start with the easiest thing to check. It’s plugged in (sometimes the thing falls out of the wall), and the 5 zones are set for 10 minutes every Sunday and Thursday at 5:00 in the AM – just like the guidelines for watering your lawn in Austin suggest. I manually override the system by turning the big green wheel from auto to zone 1, and immediately the sprinklers pop up at the side of the house. Turning the dial a bit more, I shut off Zone 1 and move through Zones 2, 3, and 4. All OK. When I get to Zone 5, the one that controls the front of the front yard and the street strip, nothing happens. I leave it on, and head out to the part of the yard that has the underground valve box.

I had just been working in this part of the yard, clearing old leaves, and tilling the soil, so I feared the worst. Perhaps I hit a pipe with my shovel as I was digging. The ground looks OK – there isn’t a large wet spot, or water bubbling up, so I might be out of the woods. At the Valve box, I hear a strange sound – a sort of electronic water noise (nothing like Bryan Eno’s stuff), but none of the little black sprinklers are popping up. What I’m thinking is the sprinkler solenoid is broken.

So I dig all around it, and take a look. I knew this was going to result in digging! Crouching down to take a look I see a 205PR automatic sprinkler valve, with a red and white wire, and some 1″ PVC pipe. It’s dry, so I know there is no leak at the valve, and then I hear a click and silence. The timer automatically turned off the valve, so now I also know the solenoid is working.

From previous experience (not with automatic sprinklers), I’ve learned it’s generally easier to replace the entire thing than to take it apart and try to fix it in place. Stuff just isn’t made the way it used to be, you know. So I bust out my hacksaw, and carefully choose where I’m going to cut the PVC. But before I do, I head back to my timer box, and turn off the main water supply to the system.

Like a hot knife through butter, I saw the pipe downstream from the valve. A bit of residual water drains out of the pipe – no big deal. I cut the two wires, and unscrew the entire valve and remove it from the ground. Time for a trip to the BOBS – (Big Orange Box Store), otherwise known as Home Depot.

It’s 7:34 on a Wednesday night – so it’s not too crowded – 18 minutes later I have a bag of fittings, purple glue, wires, and valves – and my wallet is lightened by $60 (a cheap trip by all measures).

The next morning, it only takes 20 more minutes to finish the job. I screw on the new valve, and attach the wires inside a special wax seal that allows them to be burried. Turning the water back on slowly, so the air pressure doesn’t build up and blow a seal, I start the system. Each sprinkler pops up and does it’s job. There are no leaks around the PVC pipe or valve, so I bury the sucker.

How do I know this stuff? I have no Idea!