Just Fix'en . . .

Spring has sprung and tis the season to repair.  Today I was deep into it.  Little stuff but it has to be done.

First I dug up a pop up sprinkler located in the side flower bed.  Parts of the bed is cover by five or six inches of Jasmine Ivy.  And the Jasmine vines get quite entangled and one has to cut his way through them and hand dig the sprinkler with a hand garden tool.  I hesitate to call it a shovel because it has a very short handle, perhaps a blade two and half inches wide and five or so inches long.  Just gotta sit down and do it.

Anyway I get down to the basic irrigation plumbing and screw in a 12 inch extension and them replace the sprinkler on top of that.  Now the Jasmine will not block it up.  I have done three so far, got several more to do.  But I have run out of materials for that job and moved on to other things that need some minor albeit time consuming action.

I have a weed eater with a shaft that accepts other attachments.  I can run a small tiller, a weed whacker, an edger and a blower off one 2cycle power head.  There are a few more attachments but I do not have them.  Well, the edger needed a new blade, got that done.  I have not one but two weed whacker heads both need work.  One had to be restrung.  I have perhaps 100 yards of weed whacker line, so I uncoil some of it, cut it and rewound the head.  The second weed whacker head simply needed to have the line fed out of the reel again, plenty of line still wound on the head.  That done too.

Then I tackled a big sprinkler in the back yard.  I had noted on one side of the unit, a hole had developed.  That usually indicates a leak of some kind.  This one had a broken case and water was spraying out of the side where the head screws on to the case.  I replace the whole thing.  It probably got broken by the lawn  tractor rolling over it.  These sprinklers are the more complex kind that rotate back and forth, a little water turbine is inside and provides the energy to turn the sprinkler head.  These often also wear out as the well water has very fine sand it in and that tends to erode the innards of the sprinkler over time.  As you can imagine I keep a couple of spares around all the time.

Irrigation systems are indeed constant maintenance.  A leak here, broken sprinkler there, pump problems, and so on.  But it has saved us thousands upon thousands of dollars in avoiding city water expenses.  City water is quite expensive and can cost you upwards of four or five hundred dollars per month if you irrigate.  The well is a fixed cost and after that it is a maintenance cost and some electricity and is amortized in a couple of years.  Probably costs us about $15 dollars a month in parts and power.  Cheap at that price and keeps the yard green.  The well has been with us for 12 or more years.

Finally I had to change a Delta shower control valve in the main bathroom.  It was a learning experience.  I finally broke down and bought a tool to turn the water on and off at the water meter.  A long T handled affair but gets the job done.  Yes, there is a water shut off but I think we have covered it over and so it is not accessible.   Thus you turn off the water at the street meter.

All the sinks and toilets have shut off valves but there is no where to install one on a shower control valve.  It is a mixing valve and has a single handle, range from full cold to full hot.  Well almost.  The old one had developed a drip and had to be replaced.  Had I known what I now know, I probably could have replaced the valve poppets but I did not know that.   I had to get a new Delta valve and I watched a video on the Internet on how to replace it.  Not hard but . . .

The newer valves come with a temperature control and are shipped in the literally cold "on" mode.  One has to adjust the control to get the hot water flowing.  And then water temperature is modulated by where the valve handle is set and can be varied.  But first one has to adjust the control valve to allow the hot water to flow.  Simple enough once you see it but unless some shows it to you or tells you how, well you get cold water.  Got that job done too.

I am getting good at replacing leaking Delta faucets valve seats, and toilet tank units.  Recently, the control valve washer broke up and infected the toilet tank unit.  I did know you could remove the top of the unit and clean it out, so I ended up replacing.  But I had to fix the control faucet before.  That is when I learned about shutting off water at the street.  I am pretty good at now.

Well next task is to lube and change oil in the lawn tractor.  But not his Saturday for two reasons.  First a cold front is on its way and it will be chilly and second we have the annual LSU crawfish boil.  I elect for the boil and will wear warm clothes.  There is plenty of time to deal with the tractor later.