Hey B, Its been a heck of a bad summer hasnt it? When I had my trees in Austin area I had to water a good bit during the summer to get any size going. I think in heat and drought like we deal with some water is needed for the health of the tree. I ran drip to some of my young apple trees this summer and I used the spikes that put out about five little individual streams of water and I used only one spike per tree but the trees are pretty small and next year I may need to add one more per tree. So far the drip system is working great as the trees have grown well in spite of the awful heat. Scape

Hi Dallas, Some troubleshooting is in order. Try the following steps and post the results here. First off shutting off the water main to your house from the street should have not affect your sprinkler system. 1. Check each zone for manual operation and satisfactory water pressure and flow rate. Unscrew slowly the solenoid of each zone's auto valve until the zone's water comes on. Does each zone come on successfully? 2. Check for loose or broken wires at the controller and at the auto valves. Are all wires intact for each zone? 3. If each zone works from manually turning on the auto valves and all the wires look solid, try the controller's manual turn on for each zone. What happens then? If you have twelve zones your system is pretty large in my book and may be quicker to have a landscape maintenance person familiar with irrigation controllers and auto valves come and troubleshoot your system. It shouldn't cost very much unless you have to replace your controller or valves. Even then it is not even close to what it cost to install a twelve zone system. Good luck and aloha

Hi Geoff, In regards to the foot valve and filtration, yes, I would suggest the use of a filter, why? Because small bits of algae, sand and other debris over time will build up in the valve diaphragm. The sprinkler heads can pass a small amount of debris fine (they have filters under the nozzles) it is the valves you should be most worried about. For your application, the use of a disc filter would be most appropriate. Disc filters use a series of screen discs that the water is forced through the amount of filtration is measured in mesh. The recommended mesh for a irrigation system is 100 mesh. Most disc filters need to be cleaned on a annual or bi-annual basis by unscrewing the filter top and hosing it off well. Disc filters are not as easy to come by as their cousin the screen filter. However a trip to a local irrigation supply house, like Ewing, should produce some nice results. Oh, a regular irrigation valve should NOT be used on a system running off lake water. You need a "Scrubber valve" which incorporates a very heavy duty diaphragm and stainless steel hardware (like molded stainless bonnet studs for easy service) The model is suggest using is the 100-PEB from Rain Bird. Once again, not going to find it at home cheapo, go to a irrigation supply house. About the sprinkler heads. I would suggest going with the same brand of sprinkler heads as long as they are not orbit or toro. Hunter makes a wonderful rotor as does Rain Bird. I will assume you have Hunter PGP rotors (they are very common) and they work great, some of the guys have complained they stop rotating as you mentioned, but it's luck of the draw. Because of the rotating issue, many have switched to the Rain Bird 5000. I haven't tried the 5000 but Rain Bird makes excellent products so it couldn't be half bad. Both the 5000 and PGP come with a nozzle tree and adjustment key. You can match the numbers on your old nozzle with the new when changing it out. And again, go to the irrigation supply house. Moneypenny: Any irrigation system running from a lake should incorporate disc filtration and scrubber valves. These will pay for them selves over time and will give you peace of mind. The pop-up rotors are personal taste but I like the PGP's just fine. With a filtration and care you will be good to go. Don't opt for the cheapest stuff out there, you get what you pay for and I can say this from experience. Cheap brands include: Orbit and Toro. Don't go to the big box stores like home depot, they won't carry the products you need, it's the professionals choice and why not support the local business? Links to products mentioned in this tutorial and other helpful links: Arkal-Amiad filtration: Mfrs. of manual disc filters. 322 Rolling Hill Road Mooresville, NC 28117-9920 http://www.arkal-filters.com/pro_manual1.html Rain Bird Corp: Mfrs. of high quality irrigation components. Rain Bird Corporation 1000 West Sierra Madre Ave. Azusa, CA 91702 http://www.rainbird.com/landscape/products/valves/PEB_PESBseries.htm Irrigation tutorials/help: Jess Stryker, professional irrigation system designer with 30+ years of experience. http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/ I do not endorse any of these manufacturers or people. I simply know good products.

Well, good news. I found the leak. I did exactly what was recommended, and blocked all 25 (low volume) emitters in zone one, and did a walk through after turning the zone on. But the mystery continues. Initially the entire zone was bone dry, so I went back to the source, the PVB. And water was bubbling out of the ground about 2 feet from the PVB. The PVB was not pulsing water as before, even after several minutes. The reason I didn't see the leak before, is because when the PVB was pulsating large amounts of water out, it was over the area where the leak was. The 'Mystery' as I see it, is that the leak is long before the zone one valve. And the remaining nine zones still operate normally, with absolutely no water at all leaking out of area I found severely leaking when zone one is on. Could be that only zone one builds up enough pressure to separate a big crack in the PVC underground. Give me a few days to repair the leak and recheck everything, and I'll let everyone know what I found and if everything is back to normal.