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Cherry blossoms in April.
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Blossoms up close.
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We need to get the lawn and trees irrigated because it's very, very dry. We have a customer in Kamloops that supplies irrigation equipment, so I went up and picked up the sprayers, valves, valve boxes and 2000 feet of 1 inch plastic pipe. Fortunately, the pipe was not too heavy and all fit on the roof of the van. One hundred 20 foot lengths.
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Digging the trenches. We did use a tractor and plow for a few lengths, but because we have so many trees and roots, most of the trenching had to be done by hand. Danny on the left and Hank on the right. |
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Looking from the balcony to the southwest corner. You can see the line cutting across the lawn and then along the side by the trees.
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We have 4 valve boxes in total with 15 zones. This box controls 4 zones. You can see the main line coming in from the right into the side of the box.
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Hank filling the trench after the pipes, sprayers and rotors have been installed.
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Bit of a mess by the front walkway. With luck, this will all grow back and you'll never know about all the lines under the grass. The lines going from left to right are over top of the electrical and gas service to the garage, so there is a lot in that one trench.
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Along the side of the garage. Note the sprayer close to the door. It's a small 90 degree sprayer that covers from the garage and driveway back towards the lawn. The large sprayer cannot get into this tight area without hitting the garage, so we have to play these kinds of games. That's why there are over 70 spray heads in total.
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From the road looking into towards the garage. The pipes sticking up out of the ground are the impact heads for the garden area. The small bit of plastic just showing at the bottom of the pipe is the rotor head for the lawn area to the right.
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Around the hot tub we have two pipes. One is the main line going to the last valve box and the second pipe returns the water for one of the zones. We have setup the system so that we're not watering the hot tub itself.
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Eric just finished filling in the trench in the garden area. Looks like he's ready for a break.
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Hank raking up after filling in a portion of the trench.
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The spray heads are connected to the 1 inch pipe with a small section of flexible pipe. This allows the head to be placed correctly without having to move the whole pipe. It also prevents the main pipe from breaking should a head be stepped or driven on.
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A look towards the hot tub. The trenching has to go under the walkway pads to get past the septic tank.
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The last valve box is the biggest with 5 zones in it.
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Same valve box with the lid on it.
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The control box has lots of wires in it. We have 15 zones, but it can control 18 zones if we need to add a few more.
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The control panel goes in over the wires and the cover can then be closed and locked. The system is wired directly into the garage wiring, but if there is a power failure, the battery in the unit will keep the clock ticking.
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