SUMMARY KEYWORDS
check, emitters, year, system, valves, head, water, replace, drip, sprinklers, flush, run, irrigation, irrigation system, rosalie, plumbing, sprinkler heads, sprinkler
00:02
Before you start your next do it yourself project, listen to this. You Got This! is on the air. You Got This! is hosted by ABT plumbing electric heat and air owner, Andrew Twidwell, and Rosalie Brown with a helping hand. Here are Andrew and Rosalie.
00:18
This is Andrew Twidwell, owner of ABT plumbing electric heat and air, here once again for our show, You Got This!, the show of DIY do’s and don’ts. And I’m zooming in here from Grass Valley or Grass Valley office, and I’ve got Rosalie brown down in LA, and we’re here to talk about stuff. All of a sudden, I lost my train of thought, this is strong, okay, we’re just talking about like, yeah, my birthday is coming up, and I’m getting old man.
00:46
I’m just gonna say how young and strong you are. But now that your brain shutting down, I gotta be ready to take over.
00:51
The first thing to go right. We were talking about the other day, I had one friend complaining about how she’s not remembering things. And we’re like, yeah, that’s just part of getting old. Right? Like not remembering people’s names and what you’re doing and sometimes even where you’re at, like, Oh, she’s,
01:08
Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s good to have a tracking, like, have your phone with you at all times. They can always track it. And if you forget,
01:16
that’s like, that’s not even a joke. I have, I have this one friend who. This business associate of mine, I’m in a business group with. He’s in his 70s, he fell and hit his head and had a mild concussion, went to the doctor, everything seemed to be fine. And then about three or four days later, he goes, he tells his wife, he goes to go, goes to Starbucks to go get a cup of coffee, and just disappears. And he’s waiting. And he’s gone for like an hour or two. And so she tracks him on his phone. And she’s able to find them. And he had a brain hemorrhage and had to be rushed in for a brain surgery because he fell and like, but like the tracking of the phone, right? I’m like, Oh my god. He’s so nice. It is. He’s in his late 60s. But yeah, and it was just you know, anything just head and then later on it occurred and yeah, so try have that tracking on your phone and have your have your significant other, or somebody? No, because he didn’t know where he was he completely and he didn’t even realize he was lost at the time. Because he was just confused. So far gone. So yeah.
02:30
Okay, that’s good. All right, that’s fine.
02:34
That’s not exactly DIY. But everything’s everything is kind of crazy. Here. I know whether it’s been that so it’s like springtime and warm and hot, actually. And I hear it’s I mean, you were just saying 89 down in LA. Yeah,
02:51
I have the I have the AC on right now. It’s it’s a balmy 82 Right now supposed to hit about 90. And I don’t live in even like the hot part of town because there’s like little ecosystems delivered by St. Joe’s. So yeah, I live in actually the cooler part. But 89 degrees. So I do have to run out later to go to the post office. And I’m at that point my life from like, even though my car has air conditioning, and it’s basically not going to affect you at all. It’s like your
03:22
car’s parked in a garage. Yeah, totally covered.
03:24
I’m like, I don’t want to go out. It’s too hot. Like, I mean, yeah, talk about aging. But you know, what’s funny about aging? So I forget, we were talking about this kind of making jokes earlier. And this to me, it’s funny. So I get this. You know, this is related, I promise. But so I get this text yesterday from my high school boyfriend. And we’ve stayed friends, you know, for we were, you know, we’re a big deal back then. So we stayed friends. And he used to have this 68 He had two commercials, but he had a 67 and associate. And so his his folks just passed away recently in the last couple of years. And you know, he’s in the process of selling their their house, his childhood home. So he sends me a picture yesterday. And it was the Camaro that we went to junior prom and senior prom, like our whole like, you know, our whole little teenage lads were in this Camaro. And he shows it to me on a it’s been he said I’m shipping it to Arizona to restore it. And I was like, Wait a minute. How old are we? It was old back then. It was like 67 And now you’re gonna get recently something my brain just clicked about like oh my god, the curse be shipped away to be restored like you’re gonna be 55 years old this year. I was born in 67 I was like holy smokes, but the current like so I saw the car and I was like, oh my god, like that’s just it’s it’s it was just it just really took me aback and it made me realize like first off cars were so much cooler looking back then. But I’m like, wow, we really are old like we had to go get a restoration stuff and go get rest. I’m gonna have to go get restored soon and but yeah, it was like a moment where I went, Oh yeah, I’m getting all of the cars that I lived my childhood is gonna be restored because it’s too cool. It’s being towed to Arizona it can’t be driven. So yeah, sometimes I feel like that car I feel like you know, little vintage a little broken. Yeah, just give me on the point me. Yeah.
05:28
classic vintage right
05:31
for restoration. Wow, crazy, baby. So
05:34
my spot is down
05:35
there. Yeah, right, right Google hat though. You know, I don’t like it hot. If I didn’t mention him a few minutes ago. I don’t like it hot.
05:42
Is not the time to be going to Arizona.
05:45
I don’t like it too hot. And I don’t like it too cold. So I’m really have to be in like 72 degrees at all times. And I don’t know where that exists. I’m as close to to where that could exist. I think the highlands of
05:55
Mexico. Okay, I could do that. Yeah. Mexico. I know that. Like, what? My son Theo lives in Nevada or in Mexico City. And it’s pretty much 70 to 80 degrees every day. All year long. All right. Well, there’s a cools off at night down to like 40s and 50s. Yeah, okay. Yeah,
06:15
that’s pretty ideal. I’m pretty close to that now. But I feel like I just wanted to go a little bit more in line. Maybe I’m gonna visit the Yeah, so okay. So with all that craziness, let’s
06:28
go with it getting number and in writing, we started thinking about like, what do people have to these days, like, I know, I’m working on my garden, right? We spent the weekend working on the yard this weekend, and doing stuff around the house. So I thought we kind of dip into getting prepared for spring, because I’m sure if you didn’t spend last weekend, in your yard, you’re probably going to spend this weekend in your yard. And one thing that I noticed is it’s been a really dry year, like that’s, you can’t not notice that. But I noticed that some of my plants are going to need to be watered here on the next week or two, especially with the seat. So I gotta go out and do my check out my irrigation system. So I thought we’d kind of go over, you know, preparing or getting your irrigation system up and running from its hiatus over the winter. Because there is a procedure that you know, that you can go through and can save you quite a bit of money and repair if you follow some of these some of these tips where you won’t have to repair them. Or you can make some minor repairs as you find them as opposed to doing some things. But in any event that we kind of hit on that. That’s pretty good. Right? That’s a good topic.
07:39
I’m impressed. My topic was not as
07:43
well. Yeah, it was good. It was upcycling but I’m like, you know, I think, you know, with this little more timely just because of the fact that it’s, you know, we’re in a drought again, or we haven’t been out of a drought and starting to warm up again. And it’s, you know, not even April.
07:59
In your defense. My other topic that was the rabbit hole I went down was about tiny homes and that you could buy them on Amazon and I’m not gonna lie to you that I was a good hour, hour and a half this morning like diving into like, like, wait a minute, I bought a house. I could have just bought this thing off Amazon like what am I doing with my life? So yeah, anyway, but So yeah, this is much more.
08:20
One motto I’ve always lived by and I can’t remember I read this though. If you’re paying DMV fees, it’s not a house.
08:29
Well, there was some interesting notations, but they’re all They’re all trailers. So you gotta pay DMV fees. It’s an interesting, yeah, there was some interesting
08:37
they depreciate really fast. They don’t appreciate like a house does.
08:41
So you know that I don’t look at my long term future. I just look at here. So I’m all about here now. Like how
08:50
and they’re kind of ridiculous. Those tiny homes mean, I’ve seen people spend $100,000 on these things. And they’ll depreciate within like three to five years down to 40 years.
09:00
Oh, yeah. I’m not sure I just wouldn’t be on the cutting edge of like, yeah, like my house arrived from Amazon today. You know?
09:12
I actually I to be honest, I did go down that rabbit hole before that article that you save. Yeah. Shared with me. I already
09:18
you’ve seen it. You’ve already been knighted.
09:22
So I get lots of those. Because
09:26
it is like I hate logic people like you that bring logic. I’m like yeah, you’re no fun. You’re no fun. But no. I saw
09:33
one that was for sale up and Cisco grow from 100 grand at the trailer park, you know at the at the campground up there. 100 grand. Nice. Anyway, let’s talk about let’s talk about spring and irrigation and stuff. So ironically, number one on this one is check the soil. Make sure the soil is thawed to a depth of at least 12 inches. We don’t really have to worry about About here,
10:00
no problem. No problem so
10:04
rarely freezes. And even if it’s only a couple inches deep, it doesn’t go down anywhere near that. So check the soil. But I would say check the soil and see if it needs starting to start to be watered. But you know, it’s starting to dry out. But also right now you probably won’t need you probably won’t need to water but get this stuff down before you need to water because you might need to buy some parts. The first thing to check check around the soil, the next thing would be check the controller. So it is a automatic system. If you have a timer, just check and make sure you know that the battery’s good, because most of them have a battery backup, if the power goes goes down, it’ll save all the settings which is really handy and choose like a nine volts or a couple double A’s. Maybe not check it with a voltmeter or old school like I do with a nine volts put it to your tongue. You can see this look at juice or not.
11:01
I swear to you, I believe that I can you like Don’t Don’t do this. He says just like he’s he’s the clown in the room, like he’s the clown in the room. Don’t do it don’t do it feels like tingly. It makes me feel
11:20
good. Make sure that it’s got power to it. And also make sure the batteries are good on it. And you may want to just replace the batteries. Regardless, if you don’t want to test them just replace them, it’s only gonna cost a couple bucks. Next thing is to check the water source to make sure you have water to it. So hopefully, you’ve got a system that has a valve on it. So that you can turn the water off to your irrigation system, so you don’t leave it on during the winter where it can freeze. So now it’d be the time to turn the water onto the irrigation system. So making sure you’ve got water going to the system. The next thing is check the valves, inspect the valves closely to ensure that you’re functioning properly. So that’s you know, all most of the valves have like a little solenoid in the thing that turns the valve on and off. So when you turn the water on, there’ll be water to the valves and they’ve got wires going from those valves to the controller. So go and visually inspect all the valves and make sure they’re holding water, make sure you don’t have water running pass and make sure they’re not leaking. Make sure they didn’t freeze over the wintertime because even if you did drain the system, there is a chance that one of them could have broken during the wintertime, we had a pretty mild winter this year. So it’s not very likely that anything will frozen. But it really depends on your where you are in the altitude and where you are. In topography if you’re in a low spot, you know where you live, if it’s cold or not. But yeah, make sure that nothing’s frozen. Next thing you would do is going also on those valves, make sure you check for leaks, and then loose or broken wires because that’ll happen. Animals walk by and depending on where it is minor underground, but I still have, you know, lizards and things that cruise around in there and minor out in the field. So we’ve got, you know, rodents that cruise around them, and you want to check the wiring, make sure it’s not bitten through, make sure you know, all the wire connectors are tight and connected. Just make sure all the wiring is good. You know and, and also you want to make sure that your valves aren’t underwater, sometimes they get to a puddle. And make sure the water the wires are definitely not underwater because it can corrode and make it so they don’t work so good. So then once you’ve done all that, what I normally do is I will go ahead on depending on what system you’re you’re talking about. If you’re on a drip system, the next thing I do is I go to that end of the run. And if it’s a drip system, what you’ll normally do is you’ll have a pipe that’s been bent over and held in place by a little plastic collar. So it’s just crimped, and that’s what stops the water from going through it. I’ll open that up, and then turn the water on and flush out any debris that might have migrated into the system. Because any little bit of grit can clog, especially in drip can clog the emitters. And on sprinkler heads, it can clog some of the it’ll make some of the sprays not work as well. So go ahead and flush the system entirely. And I’ll usually let it run for a couple minutes just to make sure I get water all the way through the system. From the beginning to the end of depending on how long the run is like I’ve got one run in my property that’s Gosh, it’s I think it’s like 300 feet, it’s a really long run. So I’ll let that one run for quite a bit. I’ll let that run for closer to five, sometimes even 10 minutes, just to make sure I thoroughly flush everything out of that. Once you’ve done that, once you flush everything out, then go ahead and crimp. Re put that put that color back in place. are encrypting the pipe and then go around and check all the emitters. So we’re just talking about drip now check all the emitters and make sure water is coming out and make sure you don’t have any water spraying up. Yeah, sometimes the dog or you may have stepped on one and broke the broke one of the emitters off and that spraying up. Also making sure that the emitters are actually you’ve got water coming out of them. Because sometimes even though you just flush the lines you may have gotten it may have gotten clogged up most emitters, you can take the top handle off and flush water out of it and flush any debris. So there’s some videos on how to do that it’s probably hard to describe, but you can find it on YouTube. So flush those out, make sure that you know if anything’s clogged, flush them out. Does this all making sense? I know I’m kind of rambling on.
15:52
I mean, I’m kind of visualizing, I’m visually visualizing
15:55
visualizing
15:56
picturing in my head because that I did want to say so when we first started. So we’re focusing initially on like the drip system that drip
16:05
drip right now. But it’s kind of like I’ve got a combination system might we’ve got a bank, we’ve got two systems and two different sets of irrigation heads. And on each system, part of one or two valves are for drip, and then the rest are for sprinklers. So it’s all kind of the entire system and a lot of people will have the same thing because you don’t necessarily need to spray, you don’t necessarily want to spray your entire yard if you’ve got bushes, because then you got a lot of weeds come up in between them and stuff. It’s better to have drip. So yeah, we’re primarily we’re just talking about drip right now. So once I’m done with that, once I’ve checked my entire drip irrigation system, I’ll leave it on, let him water the plants for a little bit, just make sure everything works, let it run for 10 minutes or something like that. And then I’ll move on to the sprinklers on the lawn. And that’s a little different, because you don’t usually have a way of flushing water out of those, you can polish the sprinkler head. But to be honest, this the lawn sprinklers, if it gets a little grid in it, you just pull the head off and clean it out. It’s not like the the drip irrigation. So not anywhere near as sensitive to grit, a lot of it will just run right through because the orifices are a lot bigger on it, and a lot of them have screens on them anyway, so I don’t really worry about it as much. So what I’ll do on Milan is I’ll turn the lawn sprinklers on, I’ll do each station, because most lawns are set up where you have separate stations. Because the reason we do that is because there’s only so much pressure and so much volume, right? You want enough. You need enough pressure enough volume to make those things work and spread the water far enough. So I’ll go through each system and make and make sure that all the sprinklers are working. And if you’ve got a system like mine, which is probably 30 years old and has been put together with kept alive with duct tape and zip ties, you probably have to replace a couple of sprinkler heads or pull the sprinkler heads off, clean them out. One of them I have to fix all the time. Because if my dog’s outside, he’s got this one that he really likes to dig up every time so they go back and repair it. Because he likes to play in the sprinklers. That was kind of my problem when I have to deal with that when every year I know I already know that one. So go around and inspect all the sprinkler heads and make sure they’re functioning make sure they’re spraying where you want them to spray. Because I know I’ve got some in my property that have that are adjustable, and they’ll go out of adjustment. So you got to make sure that they’re working. So then if you need to replace anything, you go out and buy new stuff and put it on. They’re pretty nice.
18:56
I can ask the question so like, if you were so let’s say that the dog one out with the when the key just took it out, because you know, you might have dogs that have similar that will do that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, similar personalities. So how much
19:09
mine woke me up at two o’clock this morning because we have the window open. Yeah.
19:12
Okay, so like, yeah, we’re kindred spirits. Yeah. So, okay, so if you were to have to go and replace this on the head, like just Would you just have to replace the sprinkler head itself? Is that just a small ticket item? I don’t
19:25
know. Depending on the system. You got like I’ve got Rainbird sprinklers, there pop ups. So I don’t usually replace the entire pop up. There’s a little pop up nozzle that pops up out of the ground. The unscrew and you can replace that and there are a couple bucks I’ll buy I’ll buy a bag of five or six and just keep them in the shed. And as they wear out. And inevitably, I’ll replace one or two years seems but you know, it’s like a couple bucks. Yeah, that’s totally dry. Yeah, that’s one of the things where it’s really simple. It can be little difficult to get the thing to pop out. Because they they sit flush. So what I’ll usually do when I have to replace a sprinkler head is I’ll put my shorts on and my flip flops and turn it on and walk over and the sprinkler while the sprinklers on, hold it with my finger and unscrew it and put it back on and just do a live you know,
20:21
that’s a very YouTube goal moment. That’s a very good like, that’d be fun to video you do? I would enjoy that just because I’m a jerk. But um, no, I think that’s I can actually see my dad and my grandpa doing stuff like that. Like just like, You know what? It’s water. Just go in and just melt. Yeah, exactly. You’re not made to sugar. That’s something. Sugar. Exactly.
20:42
Yeah, it can. There. There are other ways they make tools and things. But yeah, I found just putting my face up. Yeah,
20:50
get it done. It works. Yeah.
20:53
Old school. And then lastly, the last thing you do is go through and set the timer and make sure you’ve got the timer set for the season that you’re trying to water for. Right? Like right now it looks like we might be getting some rain. And next week, probably won’t be turning the sprinkler on until after we get that rain. But this time of year, you don’t need as much water as you do in July and August. Right. So and you probably know better. If you’ve lived with the system long enough, you know better how long those need to be on. And if you don’t, there’s plenty information out on the on the internet to tell you how long to run them. Because I remember, I we’ve got a plan that our landscaper gave us and when to set them up and when to how long and we usually just follow that and if it starts to look dry, we’ll kick it up or restart to look wet. We’ll kick it down a little bit. And that’s the
21:47
thing. I didn’t know there’s such a thing that’s fascinating to me. There’s no scheduled recommended schedule. See, I would just be monitoring everything. Yeah, and
21:54
you know, you kind of like in the beginning of the season, you know, ordering as much and in the middle of the season, you are a lot more and then near the end of the season. You take it down quite a bit, but not as much as you do as in the spring because the ground still pretty wet in the spring. But come you know, August, September, it’s pretty bone dry in California, right? We haven’t seen rain all summer. So in the Mediterranean climate that we’re in. So yeah, you’ll need to water quite a bit more. But yeah, just check, you know, sunsets got a bunch of stuff on it. And a bunch of other things. There’s a bunch of resources on the internet about it. So it’s pretty easy. But that’s basically, you know, start up and set up the irrigation system that’s already there. And installing a drip system that we had a little bit in here a little time. I did all my own drip irrigation, it’s pretty easy. And there again, there’s a bunch of stuff on YouTube about it, about how many emitters I kind of learned the hard way, I didn’t use enough emitters. But I had a couple plants that didn’t quite make it but you figure it out. And it’s pretty easy and pretty inexpensive. You can run it on top of the ground during and have to bury it. I really like drip irrigation. So yeah.
23:12
I remember you were kind of I remember when you’re kind of setting that stuff up. And we talked a little bit in different shows about you know how you kind of figured out the right amount and a lot of it is just kind of usually it’s a revision later, like okay, this seemed like a good idea. And I undersold it, undercut it
23:28
and undercut it. Try to go for as little as possible. And they realize, oh, I should have added another one sounds
23:33
about like you. That sounds a bit like you let me go ahead. Yeah, let me get let me undercut.
23:40
Yeah. And it is one of the things like it’s not something I do every day, so I don’t really do it at all except for my own house. It’s trial and error. Yeah. Unless you do it a lot. It’s hard to know but anyway, that’s our show. And if you need to reach us on any kind if you’ve got a an irrigation valve that’s blown and need to have that repaired, we do irrigation valves. If you need any plumbing, electrical heating or air work, you can reach us at 532-230-9092 That number again 53023099092 You can find us on the web at easy Xavi t.com and find us on Facebook please like us on Facebook. We got a lot of fun stuff and you can find these shows on our website. And that’s it. Catch you guys later.
24:26
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Rosalie. Now let’s get that project started. You got this. We’ll be back next Friday morning at nine o’clock on Cancio Newstalk 830