How to Repair a Sprinkler System

Video Transcript

"You may have an irrigation system which is essential to keeping your lawn and your beds healthy. But it’s also important to keep it maintained. Now, I’m going to show you the anatomy of a sprinkler head so you can diagnose and fix whatever is the problem.

If a head is broken off, not only is there going to be a tremendous waste of water from it all gushing off at one place and doing little good for everything else, but the rest of the heads aren’t going to work properly because there’s not enough pressure built up in the system for all of the heads to pop up and spray. Well here’s how it works. The heads are all buried up to, usually, to about here in the ground. So all of this is subterranean, all you ever see is this here up at the top.

When the pressure builds up sufficiently in the line from the irrigation system, these heads pop up and start spraying. Well, normally, the problem with your sprinkler when it’s not working properly is one of these heads have come off. So what you’re going to need to do is identify which one obviously. You may have to dig out a little bit of the turf around it and then simply twist the top off this, which will then release the internal components which will allow you to expose this. And then all you will do is simply twist off- well if it’s missing it won’t be there. But you’ll simply go to the home store and buy another head with the right spray configuration you want. Some are just a full 360, some are 180 degrees, some are just a quarter turn- there’s every conceivable configuration available. But you’ll come back to the house and screw this back into place, and simply drop this back into the tube and screw this on.

Now, a lot of times what will happen is if this is not sticking out of the ground very much at all, someone might’ve stepped on it and might’ve caused what is called a pipe nickel to break, and in that case you will have to do more excavating of the soil around it so you can get to the bottom of this. This also screws out which you can then unscrew this out and then go get another one of these. These are all very inexpensive components. But what is expensive is the water that’s wasted. So it’s that simple. Don’t be afraid."