Sprinkle, Sprinkle Little Drain, You, I Wonder, How to Change

Over the past 17 years living in this home, I have had several times when I would get a soft spot in the grass and I would dig down to the sprinkler area and would find that it was a sprinkler drain. 

I thought I would show on this post how easy it is to change a sprinkler drain. 

This project shown was actually something else but there were two drains I have fixed in the past and because I had to dig it all out anyway, I figured I would change them both out since they are cheap and then I will pray that I won't have to dig it up in the near future. 
 
I show a picture of me stepping on the grass so you can see the water climbing up the side of my shoe and at this picture looking straight down, I tried to show that there are sink holes and the grass isn't even and the grass is actually dead due to so much water in some spots.  


You can see the dirty drains in my hands. There were roots growing all around and that is what caused my other problem but I will post about that tomorrow. You can see that one drain is very white and clear and that the other is muddy and has roots in it. 

When you have a soggy spot in the yard, dig down until you see pipes. Be careful not to jump on the shovel and dig deep or you may break a line. I had a neighbor help me the first time that happened and he broke the line and I would have only had to change the drain but ended up fixing pipe.
 
I learned the hard way, twice now, that neighbors can be well meaning but are in more of a rush to get it finished and I have had a hard lesson having to dig down four feet twice for a water main because they were in a hurry. I did it myself the second time and took the time needed to be careful. Since then, I have tried to be careful when digging and it has paid off.
 
As you can see by the hole photos, it isn't that deep. They are usually a foot or so down. They just screw on the bottom of the downward angled pipe. The "drain" can that was under that drain rusted. You can see the blue drain on the bottom of the downward sprinkler pipe in this photo. Instead of using a can below it again, (as they both rusted as you can see in the lower photos) I decided to use a thick Gatorade or Powerade bottle. Carefully, cut the top off the bottle and then dig down below the drain if it isn't clear already and put it beneath the drain. I put some small rocks in the bottom as well to keep the mud from coming up. 
 
You can see in this other drain that it is at a really weird angle but you can see how it drains down into a can. The drains cost a few dollars each at any home or yard center. I bought mine at Ace Hardware but bought some other parts at Home Depot. Just unscrew the old drain, screw in the new one. 

After you have the drain in and the cup or can below it, put a bag over all of it so that no dirt will fill up the can or cup you have below it. The plastic bag will also keep the roots from getting into the drain. You can see in the photo to the right, the old bags I had covering the drains. I don't show me covering it all with bags yet due to the other issue I want to blog about tomorrow.

Here is a close up of the drain where you can see more clearly how it screws on the bottom of the pipe. I was so scared of the sprinklers when we first moved in. I had never had to care for sprinklers in the past as we lived in the East and we didn't need them. Once I had a neighbor show me how to work on the sprinkler box and another show me how to change the drain, I was all set. I figured out how to change sprinkler heads as we have super pressure and several blow their tops every year.  

There really isn't much to be scared of with sprinklers. If you are dealing with a main on the sprinkler which is a larger pipe, always make sure you turn off the sprinkler water main. I will show you that tomorrow.