Not sure if it was here or on another board where a question came up regarding electric lawn irrigation valves, with back flow prevention, and someone made suggestions about various valve qualities and which ones were better than others. I’ve got problems with mine and I’ve decided to change them all and need some brand suggestions.
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would that have happened over at the gardening forum????
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You guys out there have real irrigation supply houses. Go in one of them and ask the guy who's been there the longest which would he use on his yard.
Take the advice of the previous poster and go to an irrigation supply house. The big box stores sell $10 valves that are OK for city water but won't last two months with well or ditch water. I learned that lesson the hard way five years ago...
Most of these valves shut off by differential pressure, so there has to be a large enough difference between pressure at the the inlet and the outlet side. Weird things can happen if water backs up and keeps pressure on the outlet. Sometimes it looks like a valve failure but it's really a pressure problem.
I've had good luck with Orbit valves. I did have one with a defect and they immediately sent out a replacement.
Orbit?? Hadn't heard of them but I'll definitely look them up, thanks for the suggestion.
Stay away from all the crap Home Depot sells. My family has been in the Irrigation business for over 30 years. Save yourself some money and go with a name brand. Toro, Hunter and Rainbird are all quality lines.
Funny you should mention Toro. That's the valve maker of the bad valves that I've got now. Needless to say, no way am I ever going to buy Toro again.
Ditto re. Toro. I just scored a bunch of the good brass Champion and Orbit stuff at a going out of business sale.
-- J.S.
But don't forget that all these companies usually have multiple quality levels of valves offered... I used an online house to get my valves after doing a little research and some guessing. I went with a middle of the line quality valve. Lowes and HD carry the cheapest of quality from Toro/Rainbird... And with most things, ya get what ya pay for (at best...)
$ 65 is for the good ones from South Shores Hardware. HD and Lowe's seem to be allergic to brass.... ;-)
-- J.S.
$ 65 is for the good ones from South Shores Hardware. HD and Lowe's seem to be allergic to brass.... ;-)
You might be interested to know that the HD I went to had a special deal on those brass Champion valves, which they carried in quantity. They gave a full value refund for old manual Champion valves when returned during the purchase of the new automatic valves.
So I returned two fifty-something year old brass valves, worth about $30/ea at current prices and was credited $60 on the purchase of the new ones. Sweet deal.
Home Depot around here sells Orbit and, for a little bit more, RainBird. I installed a couple of Orbits on a temporary sprinkling setup that I am using that is running on well water. I installed a whole house water filter to take the grit out of the water, but unfortuntely there was still some in the pipes between the filter and valves, so the Orbits stopped working. Took them apart and cleaned the crud out of the valve and they have been working fine for the last several months.
I installed a whole house water filter to take the grit out of the water,
Grit is a problem in city water too. That's one of the main reasons I chose the Champion components. They were designed to let all that stuff flow freely through the system and out. About once a year I have to take the last sprinkler head on the run off and knock a few bit of grit out of it, to get the pop-up feature to work properly. Other than that, no filter, no pressure regulator. The system is plumbed right off the main to get maximum pressure.
I replaced a 50 year old sprinkler system that my dad had installed, a couple years ago. He'd used Champion valves and sprinkler heads, all brass of course. The brass valves had held up very well, only needing an occasional O-ring replacement to keep them from leaking. But the galvanized pipe had rusted out so it was time to re-plumb it with PVC.
I started out with the idea that I'd be using one of newer systems with the plastic valves and sprinklers. But it didn't take long to discover that they had some serious problems, all of the components. I was told by several older plumbers that the plastic valves and sprinklers had a limited life span due to UV degradation.
I was advised to buy brass Champion valves and I'm glad that I did. Although they're about twice the price of the plastic type, the quality is obvious and they function flawlessly.
Edit: The valves are wired to a Champion LC-4 controller, also very reliable.
Edited 8/2/2007 1:43 pm ET by Hudson Valley Carpenter
I'll be checking them out, thanks!
Checked out the Champion site and brass valves...looks like they're solid as a rock. All brass units, I afraid to ask about the price but they should last for the duration though.
I bought two at about $65 each. One takes care of the front yard and the other, the back. They're programed to run sequentially.
$65 each is the going rate for brass Champion valves out here, too.
-- J.S.