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Pressure seems to have changed...
Hi Guys - I am back! I think that my surging issue has been resolved. It seems that I have over 100 PSI for my sprinklers and apparently that is too much. A very nice plumber came in and installed a pressure thingy and replaced the valves that blew up due to too much pressure. I was hoping that would have resolved my issue with the sprinklers not covering the entire area - a problem that only recently started to occur. When origninally installed the spray overlapped each other as they should and around the same time the surging began the pressure seemed to diminish. So he thinks that I may have too many sprinklers for each zone although he isn't how many sprinklers is too many. I have 3 zones and each zone has 8 or 9 sprinklers so I was hoping that someone could tell me how many would be appropriate? The old system (oh how I long for the old system) had 4 zones and may have had less sprinklers but alot more ground to cover - so I don't know what to think. In all of the research I have done in the past few weeks I noticed that problems can arise when some sprinklers are higher than others. My yard is mostly level but it does rise 12 -18" up against the wall and there are sprinklers installed in the high point. Could that be a problem as well? I am almost certain I don't have any leaks. My water bill doesn't give me that impression and surely I would notice a particularly green patch around the leak - wouldnt I? the only other thing that I can think of is that the City that I live in recently added some electronic device to the meter at the street. When I asked someone from the City what that was for he said mostly to read the meter and that they would be able to tell if I had a lead some other things which I paid little attention to at the time. Help me...
an update...
Okay - I am certain that the pressure control thing that was installed was the wrong one. I started to panic a bit yesterday after I noticed one on line for drip irrigation that looks way too similar to the one installed. This morning when I went to Pepe's pen and tried to fill up his water pan there was so little pressure it took 25 minutes to fill it half way when in the past it would take 3 or 4 minutes to fill it fully. My sprinklers have 105+ psi - what kind of pressure regulator should be installed - perhaps something that is designed for home (not irrigation specific) use???
The general recomendation is that if your mainline pressure is above 80psi, then you should install a brass pressure regulator... yes, the same kind used for a house, not an "irrigation" regulator. The only thing I know of that are "irrigation" regulators (speaking as a DIY in irrigation) are the PVC regulators that I've been told are only supposed to be good down stream of the valve, in otherwords, for drip irrigation.
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Low pressure
(May 27th 2008, 7:01pm)