Reticulated lawn sprinklers are a wonderful idea for many peoples homes. With our busy lifestyles and work schedules we can almost set and forget our lawn watering needs when we have a proper setup and correctly installed automatic lawn watering system in place. However many lawn sprinklers are not properly installed or maintained, and this can lead to a number of different problems for the homeowner. In this article I want to take a look at the lawn sprinkler itself, to make sure the business end of this watering network is itself correctly installed.
Potential Problems With Wrongly Installed Lawn Sprinklers
Lawn sprinkler which sit proud can cause the following issues:
Tripping hazard - people can and do trip over lawn sprinklers which sit too high above the lawn. Tripping on a lawn sprinkler can also lead to a possible personal injury and it does lead to broken sprinklers too.
Lawn mowing hazard - even when being very careful, lawn mowers and line trimmers can cause breakage to lawn sprinklers, and to the underlying rigid water piping underneath the soil that feeds the sprinklers (being very difficult to repair).
In these cases it is the lawn owner’s sole responsibility to ensure their lawn sprinklers are installed correctly. No matter how careful any person is while navigating themselves or their lawn mowers around these proud sprinklers, accidents can occur even without knowing that they have, or injury could be caused equally as easily.
Pop Up Sprinklers Are Designed Specifically to POP UP
I know it sounds obvious right… but the reality is that many many many people have their pop up lawn sprinklers sitting above lawn and soil height, and keep them that way. It really can be quite perplexing to understand this.
The pop up lawn sprinkler was specifically designed so that the sprinkler, in its entirety sits below the lawn and the soil at all times when they are not in use.
This way the sprinkler never becomes a tripping hazard for people, and never becomes damaged by lawn mowers.
A shorter riser between the sprinkler and rigid water pipe underneath the lawn soil can lower a sprinkler to below ground level, or a different brand of pop up sprinkler with a more compact and shorter body length may do the job, or we could even use an articulated sprinkler riser to lower the height of a lawn sprinkler if need be.
For anyone who uses a cylinder lawn mower on their lawns, then even more care must be taken to ensure the lawn sprinkler is BELOW lawn and soil height. The cylinder mower with its very heavy weight and flat roller will quickly and instantly break any sprinkler which is even slightly sitting proud.
Keep Sprinklers Away From Pathways
While it may seem intuitive to place a sprinkler as close to a path as possible so as to ensure the best watering coverage, our intuition in this case would be entirely wrong.
It we want to properly edge our lawn pathways, either with a line trimmer or blade edger, then these lawn sprinklers would become an obstacle, and if hit, especially with a blade edger, would break.
Maintaining or replacing lawn sprinklers in this configuration also becomes difficult, as does installing a sprinkler guard or surround. And even if we are installing a sprinkler guard, that guard too must be away from the pathway so that it too doesn’t get broken.
A sprinkler can be installed a few centimetres away from the edge of a lawn and still water the lawn soil effectively. The soil itself will disperse the water applied to it all on its own, so that even the edges of our lawns will get all the water they need, even if the water spray doesn’t hit it directly.
Installing A Sprinkler Surround
Lawn sprinklers should have a barrier around them to ensure soil is kept as far away as possible from the sprinklers. A sprinkler which is surrounded by soil can quickly become overgrown by the lawn itself which then prevents the sprinkler operating correctly, Surrounding soil can also become lodged within the spray apparatus of the lawn sprinkler and then into the sprinkler body, either damaging it permanently, or preventing it from popping up, or otherwise preventing its correct operation in other ways.
A sprinkler surround will also ensure we can always easily see just where our sprinklers are located in case a repair or routine maintenance may be needed.
Sprinklers and sprinkler surrounds should be checked regularly to ensure the sprinkler is continuing to operate properly and to ensure the gap between the sprinkler and its guard is not filling with soil or becoming overgrown with lawn.
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