Irrigation vs. Sprinklers

We had a little issue a while ago. Since we bought this house, we’d been planning on using the neighborhood irrigation system to water our back lawn (when it gets planted) which would be more cost-effective for our family . . . or so we thought! I made some calls to several irrigation companies several weeks ago and even though I don’t trust myself sometimes to ask all of the right questions (I’d prefer Elliot to be there making all of the decisions), I think I did a pretty darn good job with the whole project. At least we figured out that it would be exponentially more cost-effective for our family to do SPRINKLERS instead of irrigation.

Pipe in the front yard, a favorite hide out for stray cats.

Just a portion of what the whole pipe in the back yard looks like all the way back to our neighbor's yard.

For some reason, a previous owner (possibly the builder) of this house built a crappy concrete irrigation pipe that goes from our front yard all the way to our back neighbor’s yard. We didn’t realize that the pipe went all the way back until we tried to dig to find out and easily made huge holes in the pipe. We haven’t had anything to do with it because we don’t have any grass. The previous owner made a giant hole in the front yard pipe so he could get water in the front when there was grass. Seriously, it was a crappy pipe, one which almost EVERY irrigation guy said we’d have to get rid of and start over, costing over $3,000! That’s INSANE!

So now we’re planning for sprinklers, also making a problem for us (darn that builder!). The only place we can get the sprinklers to work is from the bib in the front of the house, even though our sprinklers are in the back yard.

Elliot had to dig underneath the sidewalk and through the crappy old irrigation pipe to get to the trench on the other side.

Is this the most beautiful trench you've ever seen? Elliot digs a nice hole.

Long story short (too late), we have to dig (actually, Elliot is digging) all the way from the front of the house to the back yard so that we can lay pipe to get our sprinklers. Here is what he’s been working on. Thank goodness for the down-pour of rain this last week, it softened the ground.

And by the way, we raised our walls in the back yard so that the neighbor's dogs will stop coming over to fertilize our trees and eventually I'll be able to send Stella out there without worrying that she'll get eaten.