It comes in 15m rolls and is laid by a machine with an offsider raking it into place before cutting and rolling.

Looks pretty easy and I can imagine how much time it would save.

Here’s some pics of the process. I’m pretty sure the company doing the work was ‘Turfmaster‘

Basically its the large ‘dial’ in the middle that you can turn to adjust the rate at which water flows thru the valve. You may choose to use one of these if you have a small station and do not want you retic operating at full capacity.

For example some people have a small veggie patch that needs some very specific watering. Rather than adding the veggies patch to the lawn station or to other garden beds they would irrigate it separately. In that instance it may be necessary to reduce the flow and use this type of valve.

Any alternative is to use an inline tap to reduce to flow.

We don’t often get to go back  and see how our jobs look a year or two later, but this is one job I will stay in touch with because I drive past it every day.

Just 300m from our home is this residence right on the beach in Yanchep. It has had both an internal and external facelift over the last year or two.

Last year we came here and did the retic and turf at the rear, and then today we went back and completed work at the front. Here are some shots from a year ago as well as some pics of how it looks today.

That was last year and here’s today…

And then today we did the front

If you live in Western Australia then June 1st is the day when all sprinklers get switched off for the next 3 months. Simply turn the dial on your controller to ‘off’ and come back in September to turn it on again. Between now and then there should be enough rain to see you through and keep your lawn and garden healthy.

This restriction doesn’t apply to new lawns which can still receive a watering exemption while they are being established.

If you aren’t sure what to do just give me a call and I’ll help you out – no cost

What’s going on?…

Well if you are running your retic off the mains then its most likely that there is a problem with your master solenoid. If it isn’t working then you won’t get any water to the different stations.

You can test if this is the issue by locating it, turning it on manually (usually you need to turn the coil a quarter turn anti-clockwise) and then running the system as usual. If everything works with the master valve open then you have found your problem.

If not then the problem may well be the controller itself.

If you have a Holman 4/6/9 controller and the display looks ok, but it doesn’t seem to be working then the first thing to check out is whether the rain sensor display says ‘rain sensor wet’ or ‘rain sensor dry’.

If it displays a ‘wet’ message then it means that there is no 24v power going to the controller and therefore no power to operate solenoids.

There are a few things that could cause this:

1) check your RCDs in your meter box as if one of these has tripped then you won’t have power to the box.

2) check your fuse. Most likely a fault will have blown the fuse.

3) It may be that the transformer that converts 240V to 24V has died. Not much you can do here but replace the unit.

But before you call someone out do the ‘wet/dry’ check first!

A recent job saw solenoids lined up against a concrete driveway on one side and then dense roots on the other and this morning I needed to replace 5 solenoids all in a very tight confined space.

So if you need to do this what are you looking for?

The biggest thing to remember is that you want to plan what you do before you start.

- Solenoids that have an outlet onto black poly will be the easiest to work with because of the flex in the pipe.

- If there isn’t room to use a slip fix (telescopic fitting) to join pipes then you need to rely on there being some lateral movement in the pipes themselves. Always join the least movable parts first and save the moveable ones until you need to make a final join.

- Cut precisely and check your measurements. Sometimes – when you need to join PVC fittings side by side if you don’t get it perfectly right you can end up having to disassemble everything and starting over.

At the end of the day the goal is to get things joined up and working so if you need to get creative and run some pipe and fittings around a bit to get a join then that is better than not being able to make it work.

I don’t have any pics, but this is one of those jobs where it almost always pays to get someone in to do it. It will probably save you a lot of headaches!

This week I went to a property where there were 5 retic stations wired up, but only station 3 would come on.

As with all these problems it is important to begin at the controller and follow wiring and piping from there. I put the controller on station 1 and tested for voltage. There were no volts coming from terminal 1, but one station was definitely on as I was getting wet.

I did the same for station 2 – no volts, but the same station was stuck on.

Station 3 had volts and water from the same sprinklers

Station 4 & 5 had the same watering pattern but no volts.

My conclusion was that something had gone awry in the control box and it wasn’t sending power to the other stations to enable them to open. For some reason it was only powering up station 3.

So I switched the boxes over, ran a test and all was good as new.

Had we begun by chasing solenoids we would have spent a lot of time and gained nothing as the problem was located in the controller itself.

This week I went to do a job that involved connecting the rear retic (running off a tap) to the main system at the front. In doing the quote I noticed a thin 70ml channel down the side of the house where liquid limestone ended and the fence began.

I figured that with a thin trenching shovel we could get enough dirt out to lay pipe and wire…

That all made sense but I forgot to take into account the fence post right smack bang in the middle of that 70ml channel. I was about to go and see the client and apologise for an embarrassing mistake on my part, when I had another thought…

I learnt a while back that you can dig under anything if you are prepared to dig for long enough so I thought this looked like a chance to test that theory. Surely 600-700ml down the concrete for the fence post would end and I would be able to get under it?…

Sure enough after some careful digging with a shovel that only just fitted I was able to poke a piece of PVC thru and make a connection. Saved my butt and saved my client having to run her retic off the tap any longer.