Winterizing Your PVB Sprinkler System Backflow Freeze Prevention

hi Alfred Castillo here sprinkler warehouse pro and today I'm going to share with you how to actually winterize a backflow preventer as it's currently in its state you can see that both of my valves are in the open position so we got supply going into the backflow preventor out to the outlet into the valves so this is normally the way your sprinkler system will operate for the winter is where we have to take a little bit of extra measures here to prevent any kind of failures of that of this backflow as the supply runs up into the pressure vacuum breaker we want to go ahead and turn this valve that's currently on and you know they're on in the direction of the pipe so if it's parallel to the pipe they are on we're gonna end up turning this particular valve off we want to ensure that any water that might be in this particular PV B has the opportunity to expand without breaking the valve or the cap so what we'll do is we're going to release relieve the pressure from what we call here these bleed valves or these stops right now they are in a closed position as you can see there they're perpendicular with the actual valve itself we want to go ahead and release these lead valves is you can turn them right now that's closed these ball valves are not a screw all these are are just real simple ball valves that rotate so if I open this is closed open closed it's not a screw so right now that's closed and again in the winterization of this particular backflow preventor we always want to keep them open there so any expansion of water will actually flush out over here the next step to to make this particular winterization more effective is to go ahead and utilize insulation I have a couple of pieces here that I've pre-cut just for the sake of this video but we'll actually go ahead and you can pick this particular installation up at sprinkler warehouse so what we're gonna end up doing is we're going to insulate the supply side first now one of the important things that we want to point out when we're insulating the supply side many times homeowners will only insulate up to the actual valve itself or up to the brass part and that's where a lot of homework make mistakes is that they do not want to insulate or they don't or they fail to recognize that insulating this particular valve is just as critical why is that as you can see here this is a particular valve it's actually the same one that's right in here I have it open this is actually in its open position where water flows you can see here if you can see right there is that water flows right in through here well when it closes you can see the the stainless ball valve that it is in here it opens and closes well when you close this we actually have water that is still in that ball valve and part of that water essentially is just resting now on the sides of the valve itself well if we don't properly insulate this part you can see what might happen in the event of a hard freeze that that water will expand and you'll get a it's not really a hairline cracks you can see it's a it's a pretty good sized crack and this is brass my friends so this is just what a little water can do if we don't properly insulate that so that's gonna be really key and important to know when insulating and winterizing your PV be your a backflow preventer it's important to go ahead and insulate all the way to the to the actual PV B itself you'll see here I've make the measurements you can make the cuts using the insulation and we're going to go ahead and insulate all the way up to pretty much where the the PV B starts so we have the valve insulated you actually also have the PVC pipe insulated there again our knob is in its position here sometimes these knobs will actually rust out and go bad we also have a kit here where you can actually buy these particular valves right here at the sprinkler warehouse made out of stainless steel so you would really have to worry about rust or anything like that and so once we have this pre-cut and trim insulated and you can go ahead and get some tape now you want to go ahead and try to insulate as much of this particular valve as possible so as you can see here it's closed pretty well I can close that up when I tighten it up you want to see if you can cover up the any exposed part so what we'll end up doing is go ahead and you know if any excess insulation here you can go ahead and tape and just kind of measure out what you need to cut out there it's a little square there so I'm just going to go ahead and try to fill that gap with with a particular little bit of insulation so I can close this and then we'll have an effective actually that's probably a little bit more here make it make it confirm there there we go and then we can go ahead and have a very nice tight fit the important thing is you want to make sure that every part of this valve is insulated and then so with that we have this particular insulation tape that you can also pick up here at the sprinkler warehouse and then we'll just go ahead and start insulating from the top it's important to ensure that we have a good tight fit around there you want to ensure that you want to wrap it around a couple of times to ensure that you don't have any kind of exposure and to make sure you do have a tight seal around this and I'm going to go ahead and wrap it around a couple of times I'm gonna do a little overlap here just to ensure that I do have it completely completely covered I'll go ahead and make a nice cut here where it is a little bit exposed there but no problem you just continue to wrap it around if you need me it's okay and at least with this now if any water is built up in this particular valve as a result of the closure with its with it being properly insulated you really don't have to worry now about any type of rupture to the and so the important thing is to is to insulate the supply side but it's also a good idea to insulate the the side that actually will go to your valve and so by doing that again you can go ahead and measure measure some insulation we want to do the same thing as well we want to not only measure the actual PVC pipe but we want to measure the insulation to cover over the actual valve itself for very similar reasons as we're covering the supply side valve we want to cover the outlet valve as well so what we'll do is we will also go ahead and continue to wrap up this side here once you get the measurement you want to go ahead and go all the way to the PB B and we're going to go ahead and get this covered and we also want to see if we can get a good little insulation to cover every part of that valve as possible Lily make my way there's probably another little exposure there that I'll go ahead and undress I'm sure that it is completely covered then I can go ahead and insulate the rest of the pipe while accommodating it I might have to just snake it in a little bit here to make sure that I got a good wrap a wrap around and then I'll just continue wrapping the rest of this particular sighs as needed you can go ahead and finish that off properly insulating it so there you have it my friends now you have the proper winterization technique of a backflow preventer on how to make this winterize with the proper positions on your valves on your actual valves which is supposed to be closed and this is open and the proper way to insulate a backflow preventer feel free to leave a comment and let us know what other subjects you are interested in learning about so again Alfred Castillo here from sprinkler warehouse [Music]

Channel: Sprinkler Warehouse

Views: 157,929

Keywords: sprinkler, warehouse, lawn, drip, fix, parts, design, fitting, fittings, broken, leak, leaky, water, hose, pipe, pvc, pvb, backflow, preventer, air gap, febco, insulating, insulation, winter, winterizing, system

Id: hUVJfZl0bPw

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 17 2018