How long, Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.Therefore the law is paralyzed,
Habakkuk 1:2-4
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
That was today’s first reading. I can’t help but thinking that BS has run in cycles since humans first walked the earth. Does that not sound like what’s been going on lately?
That said, it wasn’t the world in general that had me commiserating with old Habukkuk here. It was my sprinkler heads.
I should’ve taken pics.
I have two heads that are too low. More than likely, the St. Augustine has grown up over them. Such is the case with one of them on the left side of my walk. The other is near the stump of a tree I cut down. It’s a good 4″ too low now.
I was having a good Saturday before I got to this chore. And for whatever reason, I started with the on by the stump. Probably because I could find it. So I start digging. It’s an easy task, FWIW. You dig out around the head, twist it off, put a new extender pipe on it and screw it back in. If you do it right, very little dirt gets in the pipe. And if it does? Who cares? All you have to do is keep the sprinkler part off and fire the zone for a minute to flush it out.
So I dug. And as I did, I noticed the ground seemed more wet than it probably should have been. Also, the head itself was being impinged by a huge root from the defunct tree. IT was pushed at about a 60 degree angle. Not good. So a lot of digging, cussing, drinking beer, and use of my trusty sawzall, I opened it enough to put the head at the right height.
Quick fire test – A leak. A big leak.
Either it had already cracked (very likely) or my prying the root did it. Whatever, it’s toast. And it now was full of water. So I went on to the other one and knocked it out in like fifteen minutes. Then gave up for the day.
Today I was back, suffering.
More digging, more sawzall. FFS why do people plant a tree so close?
Idiots.
What I found is there’s a feed line right next to the busted one I’m fixing. That’ll be a challenge. As I wiped and dug I got the sense that it may only have been the pipe I installed. Better test again. So I blocked it off and fired up the zone.
Yeah. No. It’s busted. You can feel the crack.
So I have more digging.
I sat on the porch, downed water, and fiddled in my box of fittings. I have enough 3/4″ to do it. It’ll be tough though. I have to pre-fit it, and once I’ve hit it with glue, I have to install it fast and error free. One pause, I’m done.
Then I thought. Maybe I install two 90s. That would go on easier with a pipe smashed up to the one I’m fixing. Then all I have to do is build a second set of 90s, with the “T” to install the head.
It’s elegant. Gives me wider margin of error and raises the thing up.
That’ll be sometime this week. It has to dry out more than it did in a day.
Stay Tuned.
Inspected By Pat 