How to bleed your back-flow preventer and sprinkler system

hi youtubers I just want to create this video this is going to be as quick as possible a guide how to winterize your backflow preventor for your sprinkler so this is a backflow preventer made by step co which is pretty standard I live in Houston Texas this is a device that prevents the sprinkler system - to avoid it - to prevent water going this way into the supply of the city and polluting it from whatever may be ground trash pollutant whatever I'm not sure this is pretty normal in case there is some kind of pressure back it doesn't get to the city sewer I mean a sewer supply line anyway so let me explain a little bit quickly the supply of the water comes from here and it goes towards here towards the sprinkler system and right now it's on on position and the valves there's one here and one here that controls the on and off of the valves and they operate pretty simply you don't have to really remember so though since the water flows this way having the valve like this vertically means that the water is able to flow so if I turn the valve this way where it's going to be horizontal is going to be blocking it we're not going to do that yet until I am going to show you how to bleed the backflow valve so the reason why we need to bleed the backflow preventor it's because if we just shut it off there will be water in here in this system and when the temperature falls below freezing it's going to make the water in here freeze into ice and ice expands and therefore put so much pressure you know actually crack even though this is made of steel there are components in there made of plastic but it doesn't matter ice can actually crack or put so much pressure they will actually break steel or concrete so what we're trying to do is bleed it so that we get the water out of it and leave it in an open position well actually probably better to leave it in a closed position after you lead it and then shut off the water so therefore there's no water in the system so even if it freezes inside there's so little water not much at all even if they freeze it doesn't put any pressure you will never be able to cracked the backflow system so this what I'm gonna do this is currently on on position I'm just going to demonstrate so this is not part of the bleeding system bleed bleeding process but if I and so it's this one right here they both have to be bled I just want to show you that if I turn it if I release the water it will come out shooting out now I'm gonna turn off the supply of the water here by turning it sorry I'm gonna turn it vertically like so watch the there's a stopper right here so you can't go any further they're turning it to the right so this stops the water supply so now when I release the pressure by turning this to the same direction as a nozzle nothing comes out no water comes out that means well there's actually water coming out like I said we were bleeding all the water that's inside so there's therefore there's no more water coming out same thing with this one also there's more water coming out and with the water supply turn off you see it's just dripping out it came out all the water that's inside here just came out and now it's slowly dripping dripping dripping we're gonna wait until it's completely stopped and I'm gonna turn these to bleed valves to block position which is vertical against the flow of the water so there you go right now it's pretty much stopped I'm gonna turn the bottom one off and then I'm gonna turn the top one off and finally I can just go ahead and turn this particular valve here which go to my sprinkler system off now for extra precaution I'm going to turn on my sprinkler system so that it will try to use up whatever water is inside these pipe all the way to the sprinkler pump that will ensure that there is no water in the pipe so there will be no pressure even if they iced up and freeze so there's no water here or there will be no water here once I turn on the sprinkler system now there is no water here because we just bled it and the water supply has been cut off this is pretty much foolproof even if I don't I have a bunch of blanket and tarp here then I'm ready to cover this with but even if I don't do it I don't cover it it will probably be okay throughout the winter it will it will probably freeze but I said like I said again there is no pressure now there are plastic parts in here so we do I will go ahead and still cover it up with a blanket and a tarp over it just to make sure but I'm just letting you know that bleeding is probably gonna solve 7080 percent of the problems but just to make sure that you don't have to replace any of the valve Bell plastic parts etc just just go ahead and cover it with blankets and tarps or styrofoam and whatnot okay just want to let you guys know how to properly bleed and winterize the backflow preventer thank you

Channel: DIY GEEK

Views: 97,898

Keywords: bleed back-flow, bleed backflow, bleeding backflow, bleeding backflow preventer, removing water backflow preventer, draining backflow preventer

Id: weBJoCUFeVk

Length: 6min 39sec (399 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 17 2018