Even with all of the rain we have been having here, I noticed an extra wet area on the side of the house that I recently had sod put down.
I always do all of the minor stuff, replacing heads and pipe, never jacked with replacing valves though.
Was actually going to wuss out and pay someone to do it because of all of the wires, pipes and short pipe run to work with, when I kept hearing $240 - $400 plus, I decided this dog needs to sweat a little, actually a lot.

Long story short, turned the water off at the main control valve until everything dried up, then turned it back on and waited for the wet spot to appear again.
Turns out it was at the joint of an elbow to a line that feeds into the valve at that station.
My theory is the when the lawn guy was tamping the new grass down pretty hard, he hit the valve cover and that broke the pipe at the joint.
After going to home depot for a lot of stuff I did not need, finally gotter done.

Learned a self taught hack today, when I made my first cut with the pipe clippers, it ended up cracking the pipe a little further up, tried to cut a little more off but the pipe was to soft for it to ratchet down, tried sawing it with wire and same thing, no go? Almost went back to HD and a light flickered between the ears. I cut a smaller piece of pipe, stuck inside the bigger piece and that kept the bigger piece from collapsing to where the pipe cutter could ratchet down on it.

Hardest part was digging out all of the wet dark clay muck,



Got delayed a day because of rain and my neighbor sprinkler going off.



.Red circle is where the leak was.


Done, except for filling it back in.

Awesome. I hate just about any type of plumbing repair so my hats off to you.

+1

Plumbers do earn their money, that type of work is no fun at all.

Started back filling with that mucky clay and decided that will not work, those big wet heavy chunks you cannot work them to form in the hole.
Took that out and made another run to the Homey Depot for top soil, much better.
Pushing that wheel barrow about 70 yards to dump it with that heavy muck had the tire almost flat.






Yeah



Beer thirty got here a little early today

I broke a riser with the mower a few weeks ago...seems like I never have all the parts to make a repair and I try to keep spare stuff in the garage cabinet. Fortunately, it was a 1 trip Home Depot job. I find that to be an appropriate unit of measure on the job difficulty.

Looks good!

good job. a few months back with all the heavy rains making black muck heavier, I too had a line break that was under pressure flowind all one night before discovery and getting shut off. Agree digging out was hardest part especially with continuing raind and forecast. worked inlighter rais 1.5 days and backfilled with garfden top soil. I just hate paying the man but i was nasty and whooped and only out of pocket about $10

All my neighbors every yeaf or having sprinkler guys doing such simple tasks as just replacing oradding extension risers....geeeezzzz

Thanks.

I overthought this one and bought stuff I did not need or understand there function. The pipe is 1" and so I bought a couple of 1" reducer's, like a knuckle head I thought it would act as insert to slide into the other 1" pipe, nope It apparently allows you to go from a 1" pipe down to a 3/4" pipe ergo the name Reducer!

Never a dull moment with a 27 year old sprinkler system, now it has a mind of it's own and decides to run whenever it pleases. Youtube tutorial on the way..

My spare part tub, I have plenty of PVC pipe stored.

I've always said irrigation systems are the best invention ever, until you have to work on one. I fixed one leak yesterday and I still have another one to locate. Plus all the stopped up heads and fine tuning to get it going right. I sometimes wonder if a hose and sprinkler isn't actually better.

^^^
I hear ya.

Oh boy round two coming up for me. Sprinkler is going off on unscheduled times now, from what I gather off the internet, a solenoid in the valve issue. There were options to just replace certain parts of the valve, when the whole valve only cost $18.00 makes sense to replace the whole valve!

Good news is I have already dug that area out recently and replaced the old nasty gumbo clay soil with some good dirt.

Pretty sure it is a 1" valve, went ahead and bought a 3/4" one too just in case.