Water, water everywhere. You can even drink it if you want.

We have irrigation!!! And, for once, everything worked as planned. I really expected a comical weekend, but, fortunately for me, it wasn't to happen.

BP sent me a list of items I needed to pick up from The Home Depot, so on Wednesday, I went and got them. I had to borrow a trailer from a friend at work to get 30 pieces of 20 foot long pipes to the house, but that was easily done. On Thursday, I went and picked up the trencher and had it at the house for Friday morning. The plan, as I understood it, BP was going to show up at my house around 10:00 and and start working. We would get done what we could that day. He would crash at my house that night and we would finish the rest the next day. That's not exactly what happened.

BP did show up at the house around 10:30 am. I met him there and he laid out the flags where he was going to install the heads. Originally, were going to have 6 heads in the front yard and 4 in the flowerbed. When it was all said and done, we had 10 in the front yard and 7 in the flowerbed. After that, we started digging near the house to find the water main going into the house. He wanted to have the vales within the flower bed, so we started digging. After about 45 minutes of digging, we never found it. So, he decided to dig out of the flower bed and closer to where the main shut off is in the yard. 2 minutes of digging and we had the line. So, he decided to have the valves in the yard for simplicity sake. After he decided how to run the main feed line and where to run the lines to each head he laid out, he got the trencher off the trailer and trenched the yard. Where he crossed two trenches, I grabbed the shovel and cleared out the intersections of dirt. I was known as "Paco" for the rest of the day. I was hoping we could get all the trenching completed by 3:00 pm because I only rented the trencher for one day and it had be back by 4:00. I was worried, but BP didn't seem to think it would be a problem. And, it wasn't.

After the trenching was complete, we laid out the pipes all around the yard. (The top picture) Once it was all laid out, BP went to installing the backflow preventer, or whatever it's called. Once that was installed, we started gluing all the pipes together throughout the yard. After the main pipes were joined, BP installed all the valves for the 4 sections and then we started putting in our T-junctions where the head were going to run off the mains. After all the T's, the lines and caps were installed, it was time to start putting on the heads. BP cut the "funny pipe" and gave me a bunch of connectors and we were off the races. We were racing against the weather because Mother Nature started grumbling and the rain was a comin'. We got about half way through putting the head on and it started raining. BP asked, "Is it going to blow through quick?" I said, "Sure." 30 minutes later, it was still coming down and I was drenched. BP, I noticed, was sitting on the front porch drinking some water and was nice and dry. He said one of us needed to keep the integrity of a dry work force and he volunteered for it. So, while he sat on the porch, I finished putting the heads on the lines. When I was done, I don't think I had a dry spot on me. And, of course, after I was done and soaked, the rain let up. It came back shortly after it let back and we decided to take a break. The bottom picture was taken during the "rain delay." We had the trencher loaded up and ready to take back, so while we waited for the rain to go away, we went an returned the trencher around 3:30. We dropped by Home Depot to grab a couple things and then back to the house.

We got back to house and the rain was gone. We covered up all the lines we dug except for the ones waiting on wire or covers. BP then went about putting the heads in the ground, while I... Hmm, I'm not sure what I did during this time, but I don't think it was much of anything. After the heads were in the ground, BP tested them all with the manual on-off on each valve. Everything was working, so it was time to wire it all up. We needed a bit of wire, so it was off to Lowe's. 20 minutes later, we back at it. BP ran the wire and then started jumpering everything together. After that was done, it was time to get the wire into the house so we could attach it to the control panel. We measure a spot on the outside wall of the laundry room and drilled into it. Perfect placement. Mounted the control box, wired it all up, checked the wiring, found one small problem, fixed it and we had 4 working sections of an irrigation system.

BP turned everything on and then adjusted the sprayers for the coverage that we needed. After that, we sat down for a quick bite to eat. Around 8:00 that evening, BP was on his way home. We trenched, built and installed an entire system of 17 heads in 9 hours. That was a productive day!

I thought it was going to take two days, but we did it in a day. The only thing I had to do when I got up this morning was put in the maintenance covers over each valve, cover the trenches that had the wire running through them and bury the wire going to the house. That was no big deal and I was happy to do that this morning. It went off without a hitch and everything worked after I buried it all. Although, by looking at my hands right now, you can tell I don't do much manual labor anymore. They are covered with blisters. And, yes, I'm sore.

MANY Thanks to BP for all the work, help, expertise and education during the installation. It was great time, a great project and it works great!!!

If anyone in this area is looking for irrigation, BP's business is Lakeside Irrigation (http://www.lakesideirrigation.com/) and I have his contact info. His website is under construction, so it's not working at 100% right now. He is based out of the Columbus, GA area, but he is more than willing to come this way for jobs. And take it from me: He does a great job!!!