EASY Irrigation Sprinkler System Leak Repair

hey guys it's the tightwad and today we are working on a another sprinkler head in my yard this one is sprouting water our spouting water excuse me all along the curb here under the sod so we're gonna dig it up and see what's under that one thing I like to do is to flag the irrigation head well it turned on so that I can find it because they do retract down in the ground and makes them difficult to find I have some cardboard to put the sod and dirt on so I don't make a mess on my grass I have a replacement head here the valve that screws into the head here and some of the black funny pipe also have a coupling in case I need it to connect two of the pipes together hopefully I won't need that but I don't really know where the mainline runs here I have a pipe cutter this is actually a PVC pipe cutter but it works fine on this black pipe as well I have a long spade shovel but any shovel will work it just makes it easier to dig deeper and get it all up at one time with this type shovel have some gloves to protect my hands and we will go ahead and get started so the first thing I'm gonna do is dig up around the head let's try to say about six inches away don't have too much disturbance with my lawn but I know that I won't cut into the pipe [Applause] forgot to put my gloves on but I'm gonna put them on now you can see the head was not even connected to the pipe so I think the heads probably still good somehow that hose separated from the head you can see now that the hose split on the end right here and that's what caused our problem it's a common problem with this black hose I've had six or seven different irrigation heads do this so there's two things you can do you can dig out all the way back to the main PVC pipe which is usually within a foot or two of your sprinkler head or you can simply cut off the tip of this and put the head back in and that's what I'm going to do today because I don't want to disturb my yard this time of year if I was doing that kind of work I would like to do that in the spring - the grass will grow back in nicely but I like to keep a nice lawn so today we're just gonna cut it I'm just gonna take my PVC cutters and cut it definitely make sure you're past the end of the crack these you just squeeze and they cut right off this is nasty so I'm gonna get some water and rinse it really good before I put it back together you don't want all that mud inside your sprinkler head because it just clogs it up and makes it where it doesn't work very well so let me go rinse this off and I'll be right back a great practice day any time that you have to replace the sprinkler head is to flush your lines after you've got your pipe cut off you can put some kind of system in there to catch water turn on your irrigation line let it spray out any dirt or that may have gotten in the lines you want to check your fittings for cracks this is actually a new one that I had I'll clean off the other one later but the fittings they screw right into the bottom of your sprinkler head you don't have to use any teflon tape or glue or anything they screw right in and hold pretty tight finger tighten them all the way down I don't use any tools to tighten them since they are plastic they could crack fairly easily and now we just have to put our black funny pipe back onto the threads here they're not really threads so whenever you put it on you just kind of have to twist it in but I'll show you that all right so when you're putting this back on if you got enough pipe you can put it in and screw it back and forth twist it back and forth if not you just kind of jam it on there either way works I'm able to get it just pretty good in right now I like to get it as close as I can to the elbow and the pipe and this one is ready to go I'm gonna backfill it with dirt and replace the sod around it I'm gonna water in the sod real good so that it doesn't die and we will see what we have while you're putting your backfill in make sure that you hold your irrigation head upright and rake all the loose dirt first and pack it around the system to hold it up before you try to place your sod back in kind of compact it around it so that it holds it upright that the top of your head should either be level with the dirt or just below it because the the part that actually lays out the water on your system lifts up out of this existing part it's just this center cap and that's what lifts up so you don't want the whole thing sticking out of the ground or you'll have issues running over with your lawnmower or breaking it I'm just gonna set the sod back in here like it was before [Music] and I'll test it as is first and then I'll come back and make sure I pack in some sand and some good soil around it so that this sod will heal quickly now that my repair is complete this is my main water line for my irrigation system in the main valve so I'll give this quarter turn to open the main valve then I'll come over to you and I'll give it a quarter turn as well we'll check the head and see how much spring you can see that the head is standing up pretty straight coming out of the ground which is good and it appears to be spraying a normal stream of water we can turn it to see the alignment is way off shooting at my neighbor's house over here so I can spin the whole head by hand to get it adjusted but you can turn the head back and forth till you get it adjusted to what direction you need it to this is a fairly simple repair if you don't mind getting your hands a little bit dirty I hope you found this video helpful and if you did give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you want to see a video showing how I fixed my air conditioner for a very low cost click the video in the top left corner if you want to see a video showing how to install pinestraw like a professional click the video in the top right I hope you guys have a great day

Channel: TightWadDIY

Views: 33,503

Keywords: Irrigation Repair, Sprinkler Repair, Irrigation Leak, Sprinkler Leak, Irrigation System, Irrigation Install, Sprinkler Install, TightWadRepairs, TWR, TightWad, DIY, How To, Lawn Maintenance, Home Maintenance, Repairs, Leaky Irrigation, Leaky Sprinkler, sprinkler system

Id: Sqh8Z5BAK88

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2016