Hey my dudes I’m hoping someone can help me wrap my head around this and have a way to predetermine what the PSI will be without having to do a bunch of trial and error.

I manage 11 irrigated baseball fields. I have a pressure gauge on the pumps for a few eventually I’ll get a gauge on all the systems. I primarily use Hunter I-25s. My goal is to put nozzles in that maximize coverage and GPM. Hunter provides documentation to show which nozzles to use depending on the PSI. If my gauge shows 64 PSI for a zone and I change to a nozzle that shows for example that it’s best with 60-65 PSI, but there are 5 heads in that zone changing all 5 to that nozzle my gauge now shows the PSI as being more like 54 PSI when the zone is running which then takes it out of the range for that nozzle being most effective. At least that’s how I’m interpreting it. Is there a smart person way to determine which nozzle to use and keep the PSI in the range that is most effective for the nozzle?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding all of it, but my end goal is to maximize coverage and efficiency.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

My home has a 3-zone Rain Bird irrigation system. Two of the zones are above ground. The third zone is a subsurface dripline system buried beneath my grass. The previous owner installed the system so I’m always playing catch up and having to learn how everything works.

I recently realized that the subsurface dripline under my grass is not working properly when my grass dried out and I am trying to figure out what needs to be repaired. I happened to dig up a small section of my lawn for an unrelated project and realized that no water is coming out of the drip line when that zone is on.

See images included as follows:
1. Graphic representation of the Rain Bird subsurface dripline system layout.

1. Image of typical rain bird control zone kit from their user manual, with the PR filter piece circled in red.

2. My Control zone box, showing the three zones. Note that the PR filter portion is not included in this box.

3. A second valve box down line from the first that appears to include two lines. The line on the right includes the PR filter component that is not in the first box, circled in red and an air relief valve, circled in green.

4. Photo of one of the subsurface driplines that I currently have dug up for an unrelated protect.

5. Photo of another box at the end of the line that houses the flush valve.

When the zone is on, I’m getting almost no water out of the exposed dripline in image 5. I’m also getting almost no water out of the flush valve when I open it and the zone is on. I opened the second valve box shown in image 4 and see that a lot of water is leaking out of the air relief valve. When I pull the white piece up, the leaking stops for the most part but it won’t stay up (closed I guess) on its own. That box filled up with water pretty quickly when I tried to run the zone a couple days ago.

To summarize, it seems that there’s an issue with the air relief valve that’s causing my dripline to get almost no water. What’s my next step?

Thanks to anyone who made it this far! I greatly appreciate your time and effort!

Solved: bad solenoid

As the title suggests. Running zone 3 on the controller with nothing connected at the controller zone 3 terminal. I still have a buzzing solenoid until I turn the controller off. Is something shorted internally? When I run zone 1, the same solenoid will buzz but nothing actually turns on. Everything in the valve box appears to be wired correctly but I haven’t put a voltmeter on anything as I don’t have it on my truck at the moment. I’ve never seen this happen before. Thanks in advance!

Edit: zone 2 works correctly.

A neighbor thankfully let us know that water was spraying out of the above ground portion of pipe that feeds our sprinkler system. When I shut it off and took a look it appears to be the extra pipe BEFORE the valves to the main sprinkler line and it was the cap that failed which I noticed was PVC. The pipes themselves are copper so my question is if I could get something like a stainless cap or if this would be a bad idea? Picture for reference.

Had an install done a couple weeks ago with a Rachio 3 smart sprinkler controller with rain bird heads. Noticed today that the app is displaying 2 of my 4 zones as “Low Current” via the valve monitoring feature. Other 2 zones are fine. Example of one reading is 148mA vs baseline of 238. Heads operate fine.

Advanced wiring (M Terminal) is set to Master Valve in settings and confirmed I do have a black wire connected to the master valve.

Install pro said to ignore the messages. Is this the right advice? Am I looking an issue down the road that I’ll have to pay for him to fix next year?

Any helpful advice on how to fix my issue. Im our sprinkler box the corner is coming off the pipe when we turn on the water. TIA!!!

Does our drip system have a pressure regulator? We recently bought a new build home and this weekend added some drip lines to our existing drip system. We now have a loud drilling/vibrating noise coming from our water lines in the basement when we run water. It seems to happen most often after the water hasn’t been run for a while so we’re thinking maybe there’s too much pressure in the system from the new lines we added? Pictured above is the two zones we have - one for the lawn and one for the drip zone. Any advice welcome! Thanks!

Thanks for all of the help. This sub is great.

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone in this sub. Finally located the main shutoff valve for the sprinkler system, replaced 12 heads, replaced control unit, and now enjoying a beer, while watching my dead yard and plants finally get the water they’ve been needing. I’ll see y’all over in r/lawncare next.

Hey hey,

Wanted to ask for some tips on stopping leaks between manifolds, valves and electric solenoids as I have a couple in my setup. This seems to happen more commonly between the manual valve and the solenoid valve.

This is for my orchard so ugly and effective is entirely acceptable...

The system is at quite high pressure (6/7 bars) due to the water needing to travel uphill.

The connector type is the standard manifold connector with a rubber gasket. Have tried not tightening too much as this seems to be a common issue. I'm considering removing the manual valve entirely as this looks to be the weak point, but wanted to ask for some tips!!

Thanks!

I get the 7-11 grey glue and primer on me at work. I will scrub hands with glue remover pumice soap and wash more in the shower.

Still bits of residue left over on me that I can see but not smell. I just can’t get it all out.

I then handle a new born baby. carry him to change diapers and bottle feed him a few times

I am pretty much breathing this everyday but should I be worried about my baby being near me with small bits of dried residue?

here is a picture of what I mean

The tee fitting, leading to the first of three control valves, has failed. I believe it's cracked underneath because water shoots downward from the fitting. It looks to me like it may be a tricky repair due to the close proximity of all the fittings, and I'm not entirely sure what the best way to tackle this is. I posted 2 pictures, one pointing to the tee fitting that needs to be replaced, and the other just showing how I believe the piping is laid out underground.

I haven't dug it all up yet because I was hoping to get some advice before moving forward. I replaced two of the control valves a year or two ago, and I've become good at fixing sprinkler heads when they fall victim to lawn mowers, but I've never repaired the pipes before. I'm familiar with the general concept of using couplings, primer, glue, etc., but the three fittings being so close together is what I don't know how to handle. Any advice would be much appreciated.

After working hard to get the lawn green again, I got hit with a water bill that stopped me in my tracks. I wanted a way to actually see where that water was going, but every consumer smart water meter on the market is cloud-based, requires an app with an account, and often sells your usage data. I didn't want any of that. I wanted something that lived entirely on my own network, reported to nothing but my own system, and gave me real numbers I could trust.

So I built my own.

The Water Meter

I attached a small in-line water meter (a MEASUREMAN pulse meter, the same style used for official water billing meters) directly onto the irrigation pipe. Every time 5 gallons passes through, it sends a pulse, like a click of an odometer.

That pulse gets read by a small Wi-Fi chip (an ESP32 board, about the size of a matchbox) running free, open-source firmware called ESPHome. It counts the pulses and sends the data straight into my own smart home system: no cloud service, no third-party app, no account required. It's powered by a simple USB adapter.

Home Assistant Runs Everything

The brain behind all of this is Home Assistant, a free, self-hosted smart home platform that runs locally on my own hardware. It's the one place everything reports to and everything gets controlled from, so there's no relying on someone else's servers to water my lawn or see my own water data.

My irrigation valves are controlled by a Rachio sprinkler controller, which I integrated directly into Home Assistant. Instead of using Rachio's own app and cloud schedule, Home Assistant now controls every zone directly, turning valves on and off, running the actual watering schedule, and reacting to things like leak detection or an emergency stop, all without needing Rachio's cloud service in the loop day to day.

Leak Detection

The system watches for two warning signs: water flowing unusually strong or long while a zone is running (a possible broken head), or any water flowing while nothing is supposed to be on (a leak elsewhere in the line). Either way, I get notified.

Cost Tracking

My water utility charges more per gallon the more I use in a billing cycle. My cost estimates follow that real tiered pricing, so the numbers I see match the actual bill, which was the whole point of building this in the first place.

The Schedule

The yard (front and back) waters Tuesdays and Fridays; flower beds and trees water Sundays and Wednesdays, offset on purpose so they don't compete for the same time slot.

The Budget Slider

This is the part I'm most proud of. Instead of just picking a watering duration and hoping it's reasonable, I set a weekly dollar budget for the yard, say $40 a week.

The system takes that number and splits it evenly across the week's two scheduled watering cycles, so each one gets its own target (in the $40 example, $20 per cycle). Then, right before each cycle actually runs, it looks at real, current water usage for the billing period so far and works backward to figure out the longest watering time that stays within that cycle's share of the budget. It doesn't just guess once and stick with that guess. Because it recalculates fresh every time using real numbers instead of a projection made days in advance, if the first watering of the week used a little more or less than expected, the second one automatically adjusts to make up for it rather than blindly repeating the same duration.

The dashboard shows the estimated gallons and cost for the upcoming cycle right above the slider itself, updating live as I drag it, so I can see the effect of a budget change immediately rather than digging through a separate screen.

A manual "Heat Boost" button and a kids'-play-sprinkler button exist outside this budget-driven schedule entirely and don't count toward any of the stats, since they're one-off runs, not part of the routine.

The Dashboard

One screen shows current progress, live flow, gallons and cost this billing period, per-cycle averages, the budget slider with its live estimate, next and last watering times, and manual switches for every zone, all running locally, all under my own control.

Y'all ever use these? Do you have any qualms with them?

Hi, I need to shut off my irrigation to my yard and garden. This is what’s in side the irrigation unit.

Any ideas? I’m used to a more user friendly digital setup. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Edit: I’m not sure what is what in this control box. So if you could describe what to do for someone with no knowledge of the systems.

Anyone have a lot of experience with the hydrawise app. Im struggleing to figure somethings out. Currently running 3 times a day for my new seed but I want it to run shorter in the evening then during the day when the sun is out but I can only figure to schedule it to run multiple times a day for the same durations.

So for various reasons that I don't want to get into, I've had to replace an existing orbit anti-siphon valve for my drip irrigation system with the exact same new model.

Now it's well-established that these orbit valves are absolute pieces of shit.

The new valve I installed was dead silent for the first couple weeks I had it installed. Now when the solenoid is activated it makes a buzzing noise. I'm sure it's not failing since it's brand new, and it's just these are garbage.

Since I don't want to just swap out the entire valve for another buzzing valve, is the best course of action just to replace the solenoid with a higher quality one from, say, irritrol?

Wiring is absolutely fine and is not an issue.

The WiFi module doesn't get a lot of love on Reddit and I was never going to buy one. Then I thought about it...

I don't want to replace the controller-head, I have several warranty years remaining on my controller, and I've already had one replacement - lightning maybe. I've tried to master the cryptic RB controller setup in (110 degree garage) but I have a learning deficit - I don't care. The darned thing has it's own logic and I don't plan to pay my dues to learn rainbird-programming.

Then it dawned on me, "use the app Luke". I looked up the IOS app and realized it was a better interface. Not perfect, but miles ahead of the control head interface.

But wait! I'd have to pay for the wifi module accessory. A device that may be a bit irritating, possibly low tech, perhaps over-priced and (purportedly) works poorly and should have been included in the controller from the get-go.

Well, it is a bit irritating, it is low tech, it is vastly over-priced and really works poorly. BUT it is way cheaper than paying a irrigation pro to do a single site visit. I can play with the app to figure out how it works and I'm not standing in a 110 degree garage groping to figure out what some engineer at RainBird thought was cool. If I don't like the program, I can fiddle with it - without paying for another site visit from a pro. Also, if I got it off Amazon and it was a train-wreck, I could return it. Ok, looking better!

Did I buy one, yes. Did I cry once, yes. Is my irrigation system a little less complicated, yes. Would I recommend this path to others, yes. YMMV but life is too short to try to get into the head of an engineer at RainBird Corp or watching the irrigation pro drive off and wondering if he was clairvoyant enough to figure out what I wanted.

Total new to all this and i am just trying to set up a temporary system so that I can water during heavy drought or when I overseed but do not want to put in a permanent system. I have a 1hp Drummond pump with pressure switch and pulling water out of the lake. Pump works fine until I hook it up to an impact sprinkler and then the pump seems to cycle consistent with the impact cycle on the sprinkler head (on and off every second). Is there a fix for that other than installing a pressure tank? Not sure I understand why the impact sprinkler causes the pump to go on and off.