New house means inscrutable irrigation system

May 5, 2017 2:16 PM

I moved to a new house last fall and, now that gardening season is upon me, am looking to get my herbs and vegetables going. There appears to be a soaker system built into the planter box in the front yard (also running through some other plants in the yard), and there is this irrigation control box, but I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with it and am a bit wary of just opening up a couple of valves. Any clues?
posted by sinfony to Home & Garden (4 answers total)

Best answer: It looks to me like that is simply a backflow preventer. Required by code in most places to prevent dirty water being sucked back into the plumbing system should there be a pressure drop in the system. It also appears that the valves there are in the 'On' position already.

Google search for backflow preventer

Are there other components to the system? Perhaps an electronic timer in the basement/garage/utility room or ??? Look for other inground boxes like this one for possible control valves too.
posted by snoboy at 2:49 PM on May 5, 2017

Response by poster: Genius! I wouldn't have thought to look in the garage (it's detached), but lo and behold, there it was!
posted by sinfony at 3:41 PM on May 5, 2017

Best answer: Yup. Now good luck figuring out the watering zones and operation in general. After a period of disuse (even just one winter) many sprinkler heads will likely be broken or buried. So before you start relying on the timer, plan to spend an hour turning on each zone one at a time and then walking around looking for trouble. You do NOT want to just run it overnight, and then find out that it was shooting a fountain 10 feet in the air or spraying the sidewalk or excavating a hole in your garden. Ask me how I know.
posted by intermod at 3:52 PM on May 5, 2017

You may want to call an irrigation company to come out and check out the system, do some maintenance, etc. If it's already open, it means you didn't shut down the system for the winter, so there could be some leak or even a burst pipe from ice in the system. Then you can also ask them how to use it. That's what we did when we moved into our house; totally worth it.
posted by odin53 at 12:48 AM on May 6, 2017