It's been a long, long time ...

It's been a long, long time ... since I last hauled aluminum irrigation pipe around, fixed up sprinklers, and generally got an irrigation system going again.  Click to embiggen the photo at right, and you'll see a 12 sprinkler line set up on part of our lawn.  The last time I did this was probably in 1965 or 1966, most of 50 years ago.  But today I was doing it again.

It sure brought back memories – of deep, gloppy mud; of being soaked to the bone by a 6 gpm sprinkler you're trying to unclog; of the inertia of 30' long pipe sections that just don't want to go where you're trying to put them.  The one thing that was more pleasant than my memory was carrying the pipe sections around.  The irrigation pipes here are 30' (or shorter) long, and 3" in diameter.  The ones I was hauling around as a kid were 40' long and 4" in diameter – which means they were roughly two and a half times heavier (if you're checking my math, you should know the wall thickness of 4" pipe is about 50% greater than 3" pipe).  I'm probably a bit stronger these days than I was as 12 or 13 year old kid, too.  So hauling the pipe was easy.  The rest of it was still a miserable, wet, muddy job, though :)

For the most part, size aside, the irrigation system here is identical to the one on the farm I grew up on.  The simple, reliable hook-and-latch pipe connections are exactly the same.  The sprinklers here are not quite as nice as those we had when I was a kid; I think the former homeowner was trying to save some money (the good sprinklers are just over $50 each, and I need about 20 of them).  One thing is very different, though, and that's the source of the water.

On the farm I grew up on, the pressurized water came from a PTO-driven centrifugal pump that pulled water from one of our irrigation ponds.  The irrigation pipe connected directly to that pump.  Here in Paradise, the irrigation water comes from a company owned by everyone who uses it; a collective of sorts.  The water comes from Porcupine Reservoir and is piped under pressure to all the landowners who belong to the company.  On each plot of land there are a series of risers that terminate in a big rubber washer held down tight by a screw clamp.  To use the water, you attach a gadget like the one pictured at right to the top of the riser.  This gadget covers that rubber washer, and provides a handle to unscrew the clamp.  When you unscrew it, pressurized water erupts – and that pressure forces gaskets around the pipes to keep them from leaking.  I took this photo while the sprinklers were running, and as you can see the unit isn't leaking at all.  At the left you can see the first piece of pipe in the string of 12 sprinklers in the top photo.  That little hook is all that holds the pipe in place.  A gasket inside the female part of the fitting is forced against the pipe by the pressure of the water, and that keeps it from leaking.  That's the simple hook-and-latch connection system I referred to earlier.  It's been a standard for hand-line (irrigation pipe positioned by hand) for over 50 years now...