No matter, the 'Rents put them in. And therefore I wasn't that cognizant that, once they left before watering season began almost a couple months ago, I would have to tend/worry about it. Hell, if I had my druthers, I would just let the grass yellow and die. It would save me from mowing, that's for sure. But I think my folks would prefer green grass because apparently it's an ostentatious sign they achieved The American Dream.
Problem is, I barely know anything about how it works. What I do know I had to learn because my parents asked me how the system worked and if there are any instructions to do this or do that. It's one of those times where they essentially say, "You're an American boy! Why can't you read English? I can't read English!" moments throughout my life that have made me resentful towards them. That doesn't mean I can fix a problem if something really bad happens -- say, for example, a flooded basement, or leaks on the outside pipe, the latter of which appeared to have happened when I checked said outside pipe just after work on Tuesday. Had no idea what to do, so I turned a handle, and the water stopped shooting out all over the place. Then I re-screwed some, uh, cap thingy because water was squirting out from under it. I did my best to screw that cap in place, then I turned that handle the other way, and there was no leak. Score for me, I guess.
However, I still don't know if everything works. And because operating the sprinklers is a seasonal thing, matters about it that I would be on top of in the summer I have totally forgotten after a winter. For example, the pipes are closed off for the winter, so if you want to water the lawn, you have to turn all the handles to open. That creates an ominous-sounding whooshing sound throughout the house. That's the water that had been cut off close to the, uh, main standpipe up to the edge of the house's pipe. I thought the basement was going to flood, and indeed, parts of the pipe system at the back of my house was gushing with water ... and then it stopped. The water had to achieve a new equilibrium, or something.
And then I have to worry about the grass itself. There is the far corner of the front lawn, one that's next to the street and bordering along the neighbor's driveway, that always gets dry and yellow and brittle every summer. If we're installing a sprinkler system, you use that system to prevent such things from happening. And so I need to adjust the run time cycle of the sprinklers that do both yards so that that part of the frontyard gets some wet lovin'. Haven't had time to figure that out yet.
And then I remembered that the last cycle/routine, the one my parents wanted, shut down the sprinklers in the backyard. They wanted to water the backyard, and in particular the garden back there, manually. Well shit, man, why in the hell do we even have an automated sprinkler system if you want to sprinkle water by hand? Anyway, I forgot about this skipover, and so I see the backyard getting all dry and yellow. I need to edit the cycle so that the sprinklers in the back go operational. But I'm paranoid as fuck that because of a whole year of dormancy, those sprinklers won't work. They'll keep watering well after the run time is over, or the hoses underneath the surface of the grass rupture and, well, flood the basement.
So, do I add the back sprinklers and risk a leak, or do I not get them operating and see the grass die? Those were the choices I thought I had. At first I compromised by bringing down the run times for each station and then adding the back sprinklers Tuesday night. That way, I figure, if there is a huge rupture in the guts of the system, that particular, uh, operation won't last more than five minutes before it automatically shuts down and goes to the next set of sprinklers. Or something.
And then yesterday/Wednesday morning, I realized something: I'm filling in for someone yesterday, today and tomorrow, and that entails a two-hour shift in my start time. The cycle begins at 8 a.m.; I don't need to get to work until 9 the rest of the week. So why don't I just shorten the cycle times for each set of sprinklers, cycle through all of the stations to see if they work, get the peace of mind I need to go on in life, and get to work on time? The only way to do that is to shorten the three pre-determined cycles for the frontyard even further than I did Tuesday night. Turns out that you can change run times for stations mid-routine, like I did, but only if that particular station hasn't started up yet. Good to know. Unfortunately, I didn't change the times before the routine began, and so I couldn't see all three backyard cycles start spritzing before I had to leave for work. But I was able to see the first two, and they all seemed to work. More important, after I got back from work I checked the basement and the pipe that leads outside -- no leaks.
Good. Now (assuming there are no disasters coming down the line), the next pressing matter is finding the right times to water all parts of my yards without overdoing it and overpaying for it. And then some of the sprinklers should have its spray radius adjusted so that it could spit out more water to the parts of the lawns that need it. And all I need to do to figure all that out is some time and space -- neither of which I have right now.
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