Jason Schwanz dot com

A Little Sprinkle For Your Yard

Filed under Grown Up Stuff

Last summer our HOA decided to start enforcing the rules, and they started cracking down on brown lawns.  I did my best to keep the lawn green with typical sprinklers, but there were two big issues with it:

1. I had to remember to turn the sprinklers on
2. I had to remember to turn the sprinklers off

There were nights where I meant to turn the sprinklers on, but then the night just disappears and it’s too late to do it.  And there were nights where I’d turn the sprinklers on, but realize 2-3 hours later that I forgot to turn them off.  Enough with that.

Earlier in the Spring I started working with Alan on a design (I helped measure, he did the real design), and we set Memorial Day weekend as the target for install. Saturday went well; had great weather for it. We started back up on Sunday afternoon, but it had unfortunately started raining overnight, and everything was muddy. Monday morning saw us take it closer to completion, burying most of the pipe and setting heads in place, all while still in the rain.

Two-and-a-half weeks later I just tonight got the last technical piece complete; the timer is now set! I didn’t quite know how hard it would be to do this project going into it, and if I didn’t have Alan to hold my hand through it I would have been lost.

I still need to spread grass seed over the trench lines, and possibly touch up some trench coverings a bit more, but I’m done for now. Hopefully the HOA will stay off my back this year.

Tags: sprinklers, yard