How To Find a Lost or Hidden Valve
On your automatic lawn sprinkler system you have a separate valve for each section or zone. If your system is a digital timer and electric valve system, then you will sooner or later have to deal with one or more different maintenance issues that arise.
When any of these issues happen, you'll need to replace the valve entirely or replace parts of it. To do this, you'll obviously need to know where your valves or at. The valves are normally placed in valve boxes. On residential systems you'll see one of two types of setups. You may have a manifold system where all the valves are placed into one or two rectangular boxes about 18" in length.
Or you may see a setup where each valve is in its' own round or circle shaped valve box. The common size valve box for 1" valves is a 6" diameter box. 1&1/2" valves are normally placed in 10" diameter round boxes. These boxes are normally green or black, with a green or black lid.
If you know where your valves are then great! If not, your first mission is to locate the problem valve or all the valves for that matter so that you know where they are at! A very common thing that happens, is for grass to grow over the lids and cover or hide the boxes. Or the valves end up in a shrub or flower bed and get covered up with mulch.
You can find your valves in a couple of different ways. The first and most obvious thing to do is to walk around your yard to see if you can spot them. If this doesn't work, then it is time to get to work. You can poke around with a shovel, but this could take hours or days...literally. A big timer saver is a machine called a "valve location machine" or "valve locater" I like to call them.
These types of devices cost from $600 - $1,000, so it probably doesn't make sense for you to buy one if you don't do irrigation for a living. The next best thing you can do is to rent one. An average price to rent a valve locater is about $50 - $75 per day. This machine will send a tone or signal through the sprinkler wire and then you trace the tone to the valve with a separate 'wand'. The wand is kind of like a metal detector in a way. I've had people observe me searching for valves before and thought I was using a metal detector to look for rings or loose change!
This machine is great, but it does take patience and skill in order to use efficiently. You could get lucky and find your valves pretty quick, or you could find your self walking circles around the yard getting very frustrated! The machine is only as good as its' user. Also it is not perfect as it does tend to pick up interference from phone, electrical, and cable lines in the ground.
If you are the type of person that likes a good challenge, then go for it! If you would rather not spend your entire weekend (or longer) hunting or searching for lost valves, then you may just want to pick up the phone and call your local irrigation professional. I've been doing this job for over ten years, and I still run into challenges and difficult searches that take longer than I anticipate. As a matter of fact I'm in the middle of a job that I didn't finish today at a town-home complex where I'm searching for valves. I've found 6 out of 10 electric valves. But I still have two more bad valves and guess what...of course they are part of the four that I haven't found yet!
Scott
Do It Yourself Lawn Sprinklers
Florida Irrigation Company
When any of these issues happen, you'll need to replace the valve entirely or replace parts of it. To do this, you'll obviously need to know where your valves or at. The valves are normally placed in valve boxes. On residential systems you'll see one of two types of setups. You may have a manifold system where all the valves are placed into one or two rectangular boxes about 18" in length.
Or you may see a setup where each valve is in its' own round or circle shaped valve box. The common size valve box for 1" valves is a 6" diameter box. 1&1/2" valves are normally placed in 10" diameter round boxes. These boxes are normally green or black, with a green or black lid.
If you know where your valves are then great! If not, your first mission is to locate the problem valve or all the valves for that matter so that you know where they are at! A very common thing that happens, is for grass to grow over the lids and cover or hide the boxes. Or the valves end up in a shrub or flower bed and get covered up with mulch.
You can find your valves in a couple of different ways. The first and most obvious thing to do is to walk around your yard to see if you can spot them. If this doesn't work, then it is time to get to work. You can poke around with a shovel, but this could take hours or days...literally. A big timer saver is a machine called a "valve location machine" or "valve locater" I like to call them.
These types of devices cost from $600 - $1,000, so it probably doesn't make sense for you to buy one if you don't do irrigation for a living. The next best thing you can do is to rent one. An average price to rent a valve locater is about $50 - $75 per day. This machine will send a tone or signal through the sprinkler wire and then you trace the tone to the valve with a separate 'wand'. The wand is kind of like a metal detector in a way. I've had people observe me searching for valves before and thought I was using a metal detector to look for rings or loose change!
This machine is great, but it does take patience and skill in order to use efficiently. You could get lucky and find your valves pretty quick, or you could find your self walking circles around the yard getting very frustrated! The machine is only as good as its' user. Also it is not perfect as it does tend to pick up interference from phone, electrical, and cable lines in the ground.
If you are the type of person that likes a good challenge, then go for it! If you would rather not spend your entire weekend (or longer) hunting or searching for lost valves, then you may just want to pick up the phone and call your local irrigation professional. I've been doing this job for over ten years, and I still run into challenges and difficult searches that take longer than I anticipate. As a matter of fact I'm in the middle of a job that I didn't finish today at a town-home complex where I'm searching for valves. I've found 6 out of 10 electric valves. But I still have two more bad valves and guess what...of course they are part of the four that I haven't found yet!
Scott
Do It Yourself Lawn Sprinklers
Florida Irrigation Company
posted by Irrigationman at
6:44 PM
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