About 2 months ago I started having noise issues with a system that has been in about 5 years. I get a banging that repeats several times a second. It sometimes only bangs a few times and other times it goes on for much longer - 2 to 10 seconds is not uncommon. I have an expansion tank before the water heater but it is not very close to the mainline entrance to the house where the noise is loudest. It happens at random times. Sometimes it starts when a valve (either sprinkler or hand operated fa...
I have a small creek that I want to pump from. Before anyone asks - yes, I have checked and am allowed to pump. It is about 80' elevation below my yard. There isn't enough flow for a regular sprinkler system for the parts of the year when it is really needed so I want to put in a small pump for drip irrigation and manual hose watering. I am comfortable wiring up the pump and pump relay, etc. What I am wondering about is the best way to make this easy to operate and hard to damage by others in th...
I recently had a system expansion done with Rainbird 5000 heads. About 10 heads seem to be about 1" too high. One or two are about 1" low and mud has covered them. The company that did the install said they would come out to fix this and some other problems (cutting one zone line with the plow and hooking a main line extension into an existing zone rather than the main line) but now has disappeared. Looks like I get to fix it myself.... I looked up the rainbird info and didn't find anything abou...
If you carefully look at what you do know (location of other valves, wiring run from valve to valve or directly from box to each valve, etc) you can usually narrow down the possible locations. I was able to locate a box that was lost with a makeshift TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer). A cable locator is probably cheaper but I work in electronics and had access to a pulse generator and oscilloscope. By timing the echo of a pulse sent down the line I was able to determine the cable lengths to the di...
I currently have a tap from my mainline (all 1" - pipe sizes are ok) right after it enters the basement and have a dual check in the basement with a line back outside below ground to two yard hydrants. I am adding a sprinkler system and am trying to figure out if I should put the RPZ (required by state code) in the basement or outside. The sprinkler installer planned to leave the dual check, tee off the line inside and run a pipe outside through the rim joist. These are the pros of each that I c...
I currently have a tap from my mainline (all 1" - pipe sizes are ok) right after it enters the basement and have a dual check in the basement with a line back outside below ground to two yard hydrants. I am adding a sprinkler system and am trying to figure out if I should put the RPZ (required by state code) in the basement or outside. The sprinkler installer planned to leave the dual check, tee off the line inside and run a pipe outside through the rim joist. These are the pros of each that I c...
