Installing Irrigation Pipe
Hey everyone. Today is Day 2 of this pressurized irrigation pipe installation project in Middleton, Idaho. We’ll go through the process step by step with you.
How the Valve Works
We have a riser that comes up from the pressurized irrigation pipe. This is what you’ll hook on to water your fields.
Next, we have a valve. Inside this valve, it has a screw. When you open it, water comes out of it. This valve would be closed in a specific position when the water is turned off. So, you’ll have multiple risers, and you’d only open up one of them and shut off all the others.
For the ones you want to operate, ensure they line up, lock in on that T, and get the opening in the right direction. You’d tap your pipe in and then it would go out to your sprinkler system. Then, you would open the valve, and the water will flow. And that’s how this valve works.
You want to spread these out every so often in the line, depending on how you’ll set up your sprinkler system.
Irrigation Pipe Installation
So, I wanted to show you how we put together all this irrigation pipe in the ditch. There are over 320 feet of this pressurized 4-inch irrigation pipe. It’s a turquoise-blue color and made of a newer PVC material. This one is rated up to 125 psi.
So, what happens is you have a black gasket inside it. And whenever you’re putting the pipes together, you take this blue lube — pipe gasket lube — put it on a dauber, and apply it in the inner circumference of the tube. Do the same thing on the other end before pushing them together.
It’s sometimes challenging, even with the pipe lube, so you have to tap it. Take a wood block and a mallet and have somebody hold the pipes straight.
So, if you have a regular 40 or 90-degree PVC fitting, you can use a Weld-On P-70 primer. Apply it on both sides in the fitting inside your coupler to melt it. Then, you’ll put on the Weld-On 711 PVC glue to tie the fittings. Hold them in place for a few seconds, and then you’re ready.
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Sealing Threaded Valves
The other thing is we applied pipe thread sealant anywhere we had a valve with threads on it.
I’m standing over where we put a valve for the pressurized irrigation line. This is where we used it. Many people call this pipe dope. This is our 4″ ball valve, which is off right now.
We can reach down here and get to it when it’s open. We’ll leave that closed for now, but the pipe sealant will go here.
Going back, the valve is threaded on both sides, and we just put this pipe dope on both sides and screwed it on to keep it from leaking.
Irrigation Trench
As you can see behind me, this is where this ditch takes off. It’s about 32 inches to the bottom of the trench, flowing back 320 feet.
Below me is a joint where we used the grease for the pipe. You can see what it looks like afterward, but this is the coupler side that had it. It slides in 5 1/2 inches. Then, you get on the other end of this thing to tap the pipe in to connect it to the next piece.
One of the things you want to do is do one pipe at a time. It won’t work if you get too long of a run in here. The pressure you put on this end will not allow that to connect on the other side. So, it’s easier to do one at a time and lay them in the ditch as you go.
Precautionary Measure
Another thing we’ll do is take some caution tape here and put about a foot of dirt on top of this pipe and then roll out this caution tape on top of that before we put any more dirt on. If we’re digging and getting close, we’ll see this caution tape before hitting the pipe. So, we’ll be putting this on as well as backfill.
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All right, thanks for joining us today. I hope you learned something. You can go to our Resources page and check out all the information we have there. We have pricing, floor plans, and a huge FAQ section that’s got a ton of answers to a lot of the questions you might have.
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