tl:dr - Something broke, I was a slacker in fixing it. It cost a lot of money, so then I fixed it.
A few weeks ago, I noticed some water pooling up around my sidewalk. Now, you'd think someone who works in a water utility would immediately look into this... buuuuuuutt... no. I just looked and went, "Huh. Look at that. Wounder what that could be.", and went about my business.
2 days go by, and I'm walking to my mailbox. Water's still there. At this point, I realize that it hasn't rained in at least a week, and that I don't have my irrigation system hooked up. This must be a leak. I realize that there is water slowly coming from my irrigation heads.
UNAUTHORIZED FLOW
Through my extensive background training in irrigation and leaks, I immediately knew what to do. I turned the water off at the backflow and said "Forget about it." Until the bill... $300.00 plus. That got my attention. So I decided to fix it, and ask JEA for a leak credit.
After digging holes all over the yard, I finally traced the irrigation pipe back to the solenoid. I had to do this because for some reason, someone thought it was a good idea to place each individual solenoid in its own zone, rather than place them all net to each other, in the same box. I dug it up, made the repair (with some difficulty, thanks to tree roots) and got it all running again.
Check out the pics.
The culprit valve.
Laying out my supplies. No spoons here.
How it was supposed to go
Everything was going good until the picture above. Notice the gap. Now everywhere else, this wouldn't be too much of a problem. Cut your piece of pipe to length, glue and slip it in. The problem I ran into was that there is a massive root (about the size of my arm) on top of that white pipe, and another root growing vertically next to it, basically killing any chance I have of flexing this pipe into submission. Then, on the other side of the new valve, the pipe turns into 1 inch. This pipe 90s up and back, then goes into a Tee. No flex from that either. What to do?
Get angry and rip the whole thing out of the ground, breaking the previously mentioned 1 inch side. Then give up and come back the next day.
So I cut back on the pipe, and did it right. Everything works, and now we wait for JEA.
The finished product
Beautiful. <3
