SPRINKLER TALK FORUM - You Got Questions, We've Got Answers

Hi, I live in Long Island NY, and for years ive had the worst looking lawn on my block. I have a 100x100 property, and 6 zones with 1x zone (4heads), 1x zone (2 heads), 4x zone (3 heads)... Everything mismatched from hunter to orbit and so on.. My lawn always seems dry, so last year I went crazy and watered every zone almost everyday for 1 hour per zone.. Didnt seem to help much..

Now this year.. So I hired a sprinkler guy to upgrade my system a bit.. HE looked and said wrong heads/nozzles/ and bad coverage for the most part.. Ok, so heres what he has done.. Added a 7th zone of 4 small misties into my flower bed. Gave me 5 new zone valves (he said the other ones I had were crappy old home depot ones), replaced 6 sprinkler heads with hunter PGP. Added a 4th sprinkler head onto 2 of the zones, and moved a few of the old heads around..

So right now I have 4 heads on 4 zones, 3 heads on 1 zone, and 2 heads on 2 zones. HE gave me #6 nozzles. I have 60psi water pressure from my house.. Now, not counted the misties in the flower bed, he only worked on 3 zones in wich he added an extra head on them.

Ok he ran everything and it looked good. Head to head coverage and seemed to be spraying nicely. The next day I want to check the sprinklers and put them on. The 3 zones that he worked on, where he moved some heads and added the 4th head to the zone would not pop up. When I put them on they would come up maybe a 1/4" and water would be spewing from both the nozzle and from the seal or space between the riser and the body/cap.. I then tried the zone he didnt touch with 3 heads on it and it came up just fine. I told him the problem, he came back and put #2 nozzles and said that will hold the pressure better. He ran everything again (turning them on from the zone valves), and everything popped up and worked.. Great.

Today I tried the zones again, and same thing, water spewing from the nozzle, but also spewing from the seal between the riser n body or case... I am turning them on from my hunter control box in my house. So I decided to go outside to my zone valves and turn them on that way, and boom all the zone popped up with no problem.. I also noticed that 2 of the zone valves leak a bit when the zone is running?

Also a 1/2 hour later I tried turning the zone on from inside the house again, and they pop up about 1/4" water coming from between the riser and case again, but within 10 seconds the zone popped up and worked? But then I tried another zone and its not popping up? Im so lost, I thought it was pressure but its seems not since all zones pop up from manually opening the zone valves. The controller in the house seems to be working since it energizes the zone, but they arent popping up fully or working right?

The guy is coming back tomorrow to look at the problem again, Id like to be informed before he comes, so I can talk to him.. Also is it ok for zone valves to leak when the zone is on? Also is it normal for water to come out of between the riser and body before they pop up? It seems that my old heads that he didnt replace dont do they. They just pop up. All of his heads spew water for about 10 second before the head fully pops up?

If anyone has any info or advice on what the problem is I would much appreciate it.. I spent around $500 all together for this guy to upgrade me and im gettind very frustrated.

Edit: Another thing he did, was I had a 3/4 line coming from my house to my zone valve box with a 3/4 manifold feeding the zone valves. He said 3/4 manifold was wrong and built a new 1" manifold.. So its 3/4 from the house and a 1" manifold feeding the zone valves.