Replacing a sprinkler

Last time I mowed my lawn I noticed one of the sprinklers was way too low, take a look:

Sprinkler below ground level

This sprinkler needs adjustment before grass completely covers it.

I have been using the Toro 570Z Pro Series sprinklers and have been very happy with their performance and their range of available sprinkler nozzles, so I would like to stick with this series. I only need to get the sprinkler higher, for example with a 1" extension or get a 3" sprinkler instead of the current 2". The benefits of having a 3" sprinkler instead of using an extension is that the sprinkler riser (the barrel where the sprinkler nozzle screws to) will be longer and will be able to throw water at a longer distance, so I am going to get this replaced with a Toro 570Z 3" sprinkler.

Update: The first thing one REALLY wants to do is to make sure your sprinklers won't turn on while you are working on them! So turn your sprinkler valve off or main water supply off before you continue! And don't ask how I figured this out :)

First thing I am going to do is to remove the dirt and grass out of the way so I can get the sprinkler out without allowing dirt into the water pipe.

Sprinkler is now ready to be removed

Once I unscrew the sprinkler from the pipe I have an open water pipe waiting for any debris to get in, so I like to put a cloth to cover the open pipe, like this:

Cover the open pipe while working to avoid debris

Now I go pick up the 3" sprinkler and I decide to put both sprinklers side to side to compare their lengths and make sure everything looks right.

Toro 570Z Pro Series sprinklers

Only one year after installation, the old sprinkler looks like it's been there for decades. By the way, in the previous picture I had the PVC adapter removed from the old sprinkler. That's the male-male adapter that allows you to screw the sprinkler to the pipe. Now it's time to get that adapter in the new sprinkler, and I strongly recommend the usage of Teflon tape here. Take a look at the new sprinkler with the adapter in:

New sprinkler is now ready for installation

Now it's just a matter of screwing the new sprinkler and putting everything back as it was, dirt, grass, etc. if you have been careful enough you can even put the old grass back and wait till it grows new roots. This is what it looks now, after grass has been growing in the area for a few weeks (it looks lower than it actually is because grass has not been cut yet):

New look of the replaced sprinkler

One more thing, the Toro 570Z sprinklers come in two versions: With and without nozzle. If you buy the sprinkler without the nozzle (sprinkler body only), you can purchase a wide range of nozzles from the 570 series, including variable arc nozzles, and the 570 MPR+ nozzles which include a pressure compensating device. The ones that come with the sprinkler are the cheaper (but still good) 570 MPR nozzles. You can compare the 570 MPR and MPR+ nozzles here:

Click here for information about Toro 570 MPR nozzles.

Click here for information about Toro 570 MPR+ nozzles.

Hope you enjoyed this project!

Installing a gate spring

Our house has a gate on the right side of the house, and the gate has a tendency to open itself and bang all night. Time for installing a spring that keeps the gate closed.

I bought the gate spring at Home Depot and followed the instructions which are very straightforward. First I had to clean all the spider webs and kill some really big spiders, this is a gate we don't use so all the spiders in the neighborhood are squatting in here.

Once the area was clean, I marked the holes with a pencil using the spring as a template, then drilled four 7/64 holes. To finish the installation, I screwed the spring to both the jam and door, like this:

Screwing the gate spring

Once finished, one can adjust the tension by screwing the nut in the top of the spring:

Adjusting spring tension

Once adjusted, the door stays closed all the time. Nice improvement for $10.

Final look of spring from inside

The spring is on the inside so it does not compromise the house's curb appeal. Actually I might buy another one for the other gate on the left side.

Adding a filter to the irrigation system

When we moved into our new home, there was an irrigation system installed. Although it was not properly maintained or installed, it saved us from buying all the stuff to get it working. One of the things I recently noticed is that some of the old button drippers were clogged with dirt. I also noticed the system did have a water pressure regulator but did not have any filter so I stopped by Home Depot and bought one.

Take a look at the way it is now:

To the right of the valve there is the filter, then the pressure regulator and then the adaptor from 3/4 PVC pipe to the 1/2 poly tubing which is what carries the water to the garden.

Installing this water filter is straightforward, the water filter has 3/4 inch MPT-FPT connectors so I just used some Teflon tape on the threads and screw it in. I had to cut some of the polytube to fit the filter but that was it. Here I am adding some Teflon tape to the threads of one of the adapters:

I like using Teflon tape even on garden hoses because not only prevents leaking but it also helps keeping corrosion out and makes it easier to unscrew when you need to replace something.

Back to the filter, the nice feature is that you can easily take out the filter mesh to check for dirt and clean it up:

If dirty, I put it under the sink to clean it up, and put it back in and that's it for this project!

Project #27.518: Painting the fence

A couple of weeks ago, I realized my fence needed some help. Actually I am not sure if the fence was stained, painted or what product they used before, but whatever it was, it looked in bad shape. The fence had obvious signs of "paint" peeling away and some of the fence boards were already naked so before the situation got worse I decided to take action.

The first thing I did is a little research to figure out what product I needed. Home Depot provided all the information via one of these touch-screen kiosks in the paint department. According to the guy in the video, the best protection for wood is a fence/deck stain. I'll take his word for granted. There are three different stains, transparent, semi-transparent and solid, being the latter the one that provides the better protection (the label claims 25 years warranty on fences). The fence was already "painted" so I needed to hide the defects of that paint job like paint dripping marks and such. Add to this that I don't want to repeat this work again in two or three years. The result is that I went for the "solid stain": maximum durability and homogeneous color.

As always, my wife chose the color: Brick.

This is the stain that we chose

I already had some of the painting supplies from when I painted the house, so I only needed some rollers, this time I went for quality and chose the Purdy which are MADE IN USA :)

Here is the procedure I followed for staining the fence.

Preparation

• If your fence is full of spiderwebs, bird nests, and such, use a broom to remove these.
• Spray the fence with water, using a garden hose or water sprayer.
• Then wipe it off using a cloth. This will remove all dirt.
• Once dry, it's ready for the stain.

Here I am spraying the fence

Staining

• I applied the stain with the roller horizontally, when trying to do this vertically I noticed some boards were out of alignment so it was easier to do it horizontally.
• Stained around 10 to 15 boards, then waited to dry and repeated with a second coat.
• Then used a 2" paint brush to finish the spots where the roller didn't work, like top and sides of the boards.

Painting the fence horizontally

I am still trying to figure out how to do the other side of the fence, since it's on the neighbor's property.

And this is the result:

Fence is ready to take abuse from San Diego sun