In a recent post I talked about why it is important to know the location of your sprinkler shut off valve(in colder areas of the country it is called a stop & waste valve). Probably next in line of importance would be knowing the location of your sprinkler valves. If a sprinkler system is installed correctly, the electric valves in the system would be contained in a valve box similar to the photo you see on the left. This particular valve box is around 17 inches in length, 12 inches wide, and 13 inches in depth. Sizes will vary all little bit from these dimensions depending on the manufacturer. The valve box will contain between one and four sprinkler valves depending on the installation. It protects the valves from being damaged by lawnmowers and traffic, and allows access to the valves for service and maintenance. Valve boxes come in a number of sizes: small round, medium round, round, rectangular, and jumbo. So if you know where the sprinkler valves in your yard are, fantastic! If you don’t, look around your yard for a box that look similar to the one in the above photo.
The last step in locating your sprinkler valves is to figure out how many valves you should have and match that up with how many valves you actually have. The easiest way to do this is to look the timer wire running into your timer and how many wires are attached to the station terminals. If you have a six station timer and only four stations are connected, then you should have four valves in your yard either in one or more valve boxes. Numbers that don’t match up usually means trouble. I have had sprinkler repairs where the owners had no idea where the valves were, and when I looked at the stations wired up on the timer and compared it to the valves in the yard, it didn’t add up. What I had to do then was rent a line locator to find the missing valves. When I did find the valves they were buried without a valve box. I hope this isn’t your situation.
Visit my YouTube channel iScaper1 for more information on sprinklers and landscaping.