In the continuing and long-running adventure of installing my own irrigation system here at the house, we've reached the stage of running the direct-burial landscape wire and connecting up the automatic valves in both the front and rear manifold boxes.
A week or so ago, I determined best placement for conduit routes and bore one-inch holes in the foundation block (rear addition) and foundation brick (front). I did a preliminary survey of the routes for the wiring both under the front porch and in the crawl space under the front parlours and under the kitchen addition.
I had two 500-foot spools of 16 AWG wire (one red, one white) and had fun figuring out how to best set them up to spool so that I could pull them through those tight and dirty spaces under the house.
Held by the looped handles of my two wheelbarrows on a rebar post worked, as did driving a piece of rebar into the ground with a small length of PVC pipe under it to help it spin freely.
To keep my zones straight, I marked rings around the red wires for each of the valves: one ring for zone 1, two rings for zone 2, three rings for zone 3:
I pretty much got the long stretches of wiring run Sunday a week ago (front and rear valve manifolds) and then ran the wire for the stand-alone valve in the kitchen herb garden last Friday.
Last Wednesday morning I tackled wiring the backyard valves and was glad that I didn't have to learn any hard lessons while doing so:
On Friday evening, I set the valve manifold for the front yard and glued the PVC line connections to be ready to tie into the whole system. Then, I was able to get those valves wired up before it became too dark to see. (That's why the picture below is a bit dim: it was around 8:45 pm.)
Not to sound like a broken record, but given that I'm operating with little knowledge and even less experience, I'm feeling pretty decent about it thus far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm putting together a workable system!
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