The front yard developed a leak and talk about a project that scope creeped fast! Dad originally found it while pruning his roses. He looked at the ground and there was standing water higher than the valve box. To troubleshoot the severity of the leak, he turned off the shutoff to see if the leak is after or before that valve. Luckily it water level started to reside. To get a better look, he dug up the shutoff valve to find there was a steel pipe after the shutoff but before the valvebox that ruptured. Even worse news, the plumbing is steel all the way past the anti-siphon valve… He will have to dig up the entire system.
After he dug up everything but the offending pipe, he waited a couple weeks for a free weekend and started wrenching on the pipe. Well, he broke the pipe… past the shutoff. There is nothing stopping the main from flowing out into the front yard!
Henry’s Awful Mistake
Since the main was opened up to the elements, Dad had to deal with its consequences. Now there is dirt and gravel in the water main to the house! Couple valves sucked up dirt and started clogging. What a nightmare! Luckily, the shutoffs for the features in the house are compression fittings and so Dad popped off the shutoff, returned pressure in the water and flushed out the pipe. The showers and the toilets required a little more work. Toilets are easy as the fill valve’s top can be taken apart and reopening the shutoff pushes rocks and sand right through into the tank. Flushing out showers only require you to take apart the valve, which for what we had (Moen’s) was just a retainer clip and a steady yank on the valve control.
Finally, back to the problem at hand
Finally with all the house issues resolved, Dad can go back to fixing the front yard plumbing. Since he dug up so much (from the shutoff all the way through to the irrigation distribution pipe), he decided to just use a larger valve box and build everything from scratch.
1″ Elbow from main to the valve box.
New valve box, new plumbing. Left some room to allow a second zone.
This exercise has pushed Dad to do plumbing he otherwise have avoided. It has brought him confidence to work on plumbing both outside and inside.