# Just finished my DIY install. Here are lessons learned:



## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

Hi all,

I recently completed a DIY irrigation install. I would say it was a "medium" size install but with "moderate" difficulty due to the number of utilities, pretty steep slope, and layout of my property. All in all, I installed 5 zones over roughly 3k sqft. Also, my house was built in 1971 so while it's not super old, it's plumbed on 3/4" copper from the mainline at the street, which, as it turns out, is extremely restrictive compared to more modern plumbing which I take to be 1" (from what I've read on this forum and elsewhere).

All that said, I wanted to drop a write-up here detailing my learnings. My hope is that it will help those of you who have decided on a DIY install and could use anecdotal experience and tips from somebody who just got done with their install.

Let me start by saying that I would NOT choose to DIY this again if I was given the same circumstances (property with the same challenges and restrictions). I would ONLY take this on for a similarly sized, flat property that was less riddled with utilities. I say this because the project was extremely stressful, and took MUCH longer than I anticipated despite being very prepared, all the while our lawn looked completely horrible from being trenched (also I had killed all the grass for a reno). However, there are several things I would do differently, and I believe you can do differently to make it a much more enjoyable experience if you decide to continue with the DIY:

Planning:

This is just about the only phase that actually went off without a hitch, but I want to list some key things that everyone should do:


First things first. MAKE SURE YOU PLAN. Do not go into this without thoroughly planning everything from start to finish. I suggest reading the ENTIRE design tutorial (every. single. page) at https://www.irrigationtutorials.com/. That site is great, and teaches you about things like pressure loss, water velocity, all the way down to putting together threaded fittings, when to use PTFE tape, etc. I am so amazed at how many people on YouTube use a bucket test for their GPM test rather than using the correct tables to determine the actual safe velocity for their plumbing, and do things like use "steps" between heads to determine head layout rather than actually measuring and being conservative with sprinkler range. If you read this tutorial there will be 0 guesswork and your system will come out great.

Definitely get at least one free plan from a company like RainBird or Orbit. My strategy was that I read everything at the site above, then designed my system, then sent out for a plan from RainBird. They will send you back a design that you can compare with your own and ask yourself why they did certain things and whether they align with what you learned reading the tutorials. They also send you an inventory list, which is great because if you go to the RainBird site, it will auto-populate your shopping cart, and you get a discount as well. As it turns out, the prices at SprinklerWarehouse were actually better than RainBirds in most cases, even with the discount, so I only bought about $200 worth of stuff from RainBird (I spent over $2500 on parts in total).

Do NOT forego calling 811. Not only is it illegal, but dang, there were like 4x the number of utilities on my property than I had thought. Even with calling them, I nicked 2 comcast cables (don't care, we don't use them, and I think 1 was abandoned anyway). You could hit something much worse than that, so definitely call them.

Install

Ask for help. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE HELP. Don't start without having help lined up! I'm terrible at this, and it wasn't until I had everything trenched that I realized I was in WAY over my head and I actually started to feel like I was about to have a panic attack. For the record, I am not an anxious person and have never struggled with anxiety or panic attacks. This project brought me to my limit because it was such a huge endeavor and I didn't ask for help. I did eventually get about 12 man-hours of help which was HUGE (we did an entire zone start to finish in just 4 hours hand-digging), if I had help from the get-go things would have been MUCH easier. I'd suggest having like 2-4 friends that can come on different days just to not spread anyone too thin.

Have back up plans for your backup plans. Case and point: My original plan as designed by RainBird had me going around the back of my house with the mainline to avoid going under my driveway. Well, there is a pretty large tree in my backyard that I would be about 10-15' away from with my PVC mainline. I DID have the tree drawn on my plan request, so they knew about it, but I guess they figured it wasn't a problem. Anyway, on the day of install, I ran the trencher back there and QUICKLY found out that there was no way in absolute heck I was running a trench through there. The ground was basically entirely root. So I ended up changing the plan and going around the front of my house and under the driveway. This made the run LONGER, and even though I had bought extra wire for my valves, I was 10' short with the new distance, necessitating the purchase of more wire from SprinklerWarehouse and returning the original wire I had bought. SprinklerWarehouse's return policy is...not great, to put it nicely, so this ended up being a very expensive mistake/oversight. I later found out that there is a local irrigation shop near me where I could have purchased all my wire from, so I'd also recommend looking locally for irrigation supply stores!

If you need to trench under walkways or driveways, use this kit. It's freaking AWESOME, and only took me like 10 minutes to get under my driveway. So long as your soil isn't super rocky and you have decent water pressure, it should work for you too.

I would strongly suggest trenching by zone. I think this is also recommended in the tutorial, but I didn't heed the advice because I wanted to use a trencher rental and they are about $300/day near me, so I couldn't afford to spend $1500 over 5 days trenching 5 zones. If you have a huge property there's no way around it, you're going to need to rent a trencher of some sort. If your property is flat, I would DEFINITELY look into hiring somebody to trench or pull your pipe using one of those vibratory machines. Trenching is by FAR the worst part of the project. Everything else is honestly super easy (and kinda fun). I DID call one place to see if they would run trenches for me but they said no. Apparently they were too busy for small projects. If you have a small property, you could totally hand dig assuming your soil isn't garbage. You'll just need the right tools (more on that later!) and some help. If I were to do a 3000 sqft install again, I would likely hand dig and do each zone one by one so that I don't have the whole yard torn up at one time. As it turns out, traditional trenchers are really not that great and leave a LOT of dirt in the trench. Without the correct shovels, getting that dirt out is extremely annoying, and on much of the property, hand-digging was actually faster than trenching. Also, because I'm in a freezing zone, I was shooting for 16" on mainline trench and 12" on lateral depth. I likely averaged more like 10" on laterals, which is probably fine, but because I was stressed out and it rained basically the entire time I was trenching, I had a hard time getting to 12" everywhere. Had I trenched by zone, I would have been less stressed and in a hurry to get things done, and I could've taken the time required to get as deep as necessary for all my trenches. Finally, trenchers do NOT handle slopes, like at all. So while I did rent a trencher, I was probably only able to trench 50% of my property using it. The slope and areas with utilities were all hand-dug, which made it feel like I didn't quite get the full benefit of a trencher.

TOOLS: I bought several tools that were extremely helpful and would have saved me a lot of time if I had them before the install. The most important are shovels. A normal spade shovel won't do the trick. I had two that were life savers, the first of which is called a "drain spade". (This isn't the exact one I own, I got mine from a big box store). This is great for trenching because it is just about the depth you want to dig to and it's wide enough to give you room to work in the trench. The second shovel that was AWESOME and I didn't find til I was about 2/3 done was this one (again, not the exact one I have). It is much narrower and PERFECT for getting the dirt out of trenches you've dug with a trencher. It's also very penetrative so it's great for breaking up ground that the first shovel might have a tougher time with. I would highly recommend having these in your arsenal prior to breaking ground. Another shovel I would have loved to own and ended up borrowing from my neighbor towards the end was a hand spade. They're great for finer digging like making room for a head, or if you're like me and literally miss installing a head during the installation, adding a head after everything's already buried... Not a necessity, but if you have one laying around it will help in some special cases.

Valve boxes: Somewhere in the irrigation tutorials site there is a detail drawing of a valve box and it says something along the lines of "one valve per box". Well I took this to heart and attempted to install 4 valves in 4 valve boxes on one side of my house. This was a nightmare because they took up MUCH more space and it was very hard to measure out the PVC such that it would go between the valve boxes and everything would line up correctly. Long story short, do what everyone else does and install them all in one bigger valve box (by the way, valve boxes on SprinklerWarehouse are like $60+ and the ones at Lowe's are like $15. If you won't be walking on them, I'd suggest getting the cheapos). If you put all your valves in a single box, there's a good chance you'll need to replace the entire manifold if you have a valve fail, but it takes like 5 minutes to put together a whole manifold so I think it's definitely worth the tradeoff there. It looks better and takes up much less space than 4 individual valve boxes.

Wiring: This is a mistake I made that was pretty expensive (aside from the not-having-enough mistake I mentioned earlier). I am very bad with electric, so this is admittedly a very noob mistake, but maybe other people will make the same. My system had 4 valves on one side of the house and 1 valve on the other side. The 4 valves are only like 10-15' from my controller, and therefore I only needed 7 conductor wire from my controller to the first 4 valves (this would have wires for all 5 valves, one common wire, and one extra wire for an additional valve in the future), in other words 10-15' of 7 conductor wire. From there, I could have ran 3 conductor wire for the rest of the 140' of my mainline to the fifth valve which would have included the 5th valve wire, an additional valve wire, and the common wire. What I ACTUALLY did though, was bought 150' of 7 conductor wire. Because wire is more expensive when it has more conductors, I spent a lot more money than I would have on 15' of 5 conductor wire and 150' of 3 conductor wire. Rookie mistake.

General

Here are some additional high-level things I'd do differently:


Timing: I started my irrigation project on July 29. I thought I would be done within a week. It ended up taking me close to a month or so from start to finish. I was doing a full reno and had already killed my grass, but I had to put seed down the following week, so I had only a few days to bring in 4 yards of topsoil, spread it, level it, roll it, etc. to prepare for seed. While I ended up getting everything done, it only added to the stress and ended up being less than perfect because my trenches still compacted even after multiple compaction cycles with a roller. If I were to do this again, I would have installed the irrigation in the Spring, done some low-effort seeding just to get through summer (or just leave the trenches un-seeded) and then done the full reno in the Fall. This would have given me a break and the lawn wouldn't have looked as horrible because I wouldn't have killed the lawn prior to digging. Also, I wouldn't have been digging in 90+ heat! So if you haven't started planning yet, I'd suggest starting your planning for the install the Fall PRIOR to install, then installing in the Spring, then reno-ing (if desired) the Fall after the install.

Set expectations with my wife: I don't think I could've really known it'd take so long, but my wife was definitely stressed about the project because not only did our lawn look horrible, but we have a very active/hyper 2 year old that is a handful to take care of. She had the immense burden of caring for him while I was basically absent for several weeks.

One thing I plan on adding to this post later is my total cost (now added, see edits). I was never able to get a quote from a place near me, so I don't know how much they would've charged me, but I suspect that I did not save THAT much money, and if that is the case, I wish I'd paid somebody because it was not worth the stress to DIY it. I probably spent about $3000 or a little bit over that including the plumber, and I've seen similar size installs (albeit on flat properties with newer houses) for $3000-4000. I would've 100% spent an additional $1000 for the peace of mind of a pro install in less time with less stress. Note: My cost was elevated because I opted for Blu-Lock laterals over typical Poly ones. I think this was the right choice, because Blu-Lock is SO easy to work with, and it greatly reduced the stress I had during the install. But it was 2x-3x more expensive than normal poly and fittings, so it may not be worth it for everyone.

That's everything off the top of my head -- but I will likely come back and edit this to add more as things pop up again. I'll try to comment when I do so and point to exactly what was changed/added. I hope this is a valuable resource to people considering a DIY install, and I hope it supplements the irrigation tutorials website (again, READ THAT!) with some real-world post-install advice. Please let me know if anything above is confusing or requires more clarification. I will be happy to add/modify as needed!

Best of luck in your installs 

Edits

Cost: I went back through my records and totaled the cost for the install, which comes to roughly $3200. I'd love to hear what others are spending on theirs (both DIY and pro-install) because like I mentioned, I was never able to get a quote. It's worth noting again that this includes intentionally spending more on blu-lock fittings and pipe, and a 12-zone controller which I now know was a waste because I will never be irrigating the back yard (the slope there is worse than what's in the front yard!).

Great tips from @acampinoob regarding lateral depth, using a ground saw, back-up wiring, etc.

Pictures

Adding pictures at the bottom of the post here so they don't break up the text too much:

Breaking ground on 07-28-2020. This is on the side yard where there were utilities everywhere, so I hand dug just about all 80+ feet. Didn't take long honestly, the best part of the entire project was that our soil is pretty good. My son was overseeing operations.


The next few pictures are taken at different periods between 07-28-2020 and 08-19-2020 when I finally finished. It was at this point that I realized I was in WAY over my head, and began phoning friends for help.






Apparently I only took one picture of laterals going in. This was the worst part of the whole yard. We had a tree taken down in April of 2020 (3 months prior to starting the irrigation), and the roots were everywhere. So not only was it hard to get these trenches dug, but I spent a long time digging out giant roots in the area between the laterals because the TTTF I had planted there during after the tree was taken down never rooted well, so I knew I would have to dig out the roots if I wanted the PRG to root well.


The next two pics are the homestretch, leveling things out and getting ready for topsoil.




And finally, time to sit back and relax. This picture was taken a day after seed-down on 08-25-2020.


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

Tagging @Romangorilla , @Vetrano and @CenlaLowell as they showed some interest in this write-up.


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## TSGarp007 (May 22, 2018)

Great write up! Definitely some similarities with my experience. I also used blu-loc which was super quick. I had a lot of zones and pipe laid, might have given up if I used pvc...


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

TSGarp007 said:


> Great write up! Definitely some similarities with my experience. I also used blu-loc which was super quick. I had a lot of zones and pipe laid, might have given up if I used pvc...


Thank you! Let me know if there's something you experienced as being hellish that wasn't listed in my write-up. Chances are I experienced it too, but just forgot  Would be happy to have community contributions of "worst thing about the DIY install" to make this post more robust!


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## Di3soft (Jun 13, 2020)

A little late now but the new blu lock fittings are rated to be used with 80psi or 100psi poly pipe I have a few on my above ground for my renovation and they work great. So you can skip the blu lock pipe in favor of poly


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## TSGarp007 (May 22, 2018)

Di3soft said:


> A little late now but the new blu lock fittings are rated to be used with 80psi or 100psi poly pipe I have a few on my above ground for my renovation and they work great. So you can skip the blu lock pipe in favor of poly


That's a great point!


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## RVAGuy (Jul 27, 2020)

I just did a 100% PVC install on about 8,000sf with 11 zones. I just have to say, I think you made it harder on yourself going so deep. We have similar frost lines, but I only put mine down about 6-10 inches. We have to winterize and blow out the lines anyways, but I'd rather have the serviceability of the lines being at a reachable depth. Especially using the Blue-Locks, I wouldn't have put them as deep. I had a friend's neighbor that installed these professionally by hand and that was his motto anyways.

I'd also like to say use a ground saw https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Ground-Saw/EZ9100/index.htmlfor trenching. These things are great except for damp clay. If you have damp clay, it will kind of gum up and not throw out to the side like it's supposed to. But man, these things totally destroy roots and rocks. Part of my yard was super quick (the part that had rocks by the driveway) and other parts were slow (mostly the rest). I did a neat "hack" and used 2 belts to pull it along. One around my waist and another double-looped around the handle. It's not dangerous either, as these machines are pretty controllable and come to rest if you release the clutch.

Another thing I did was add an additional 7/1 wire to my last valve box, just in case I needed to repair a broken wire or add zones. I'd rather spend a little more on the next largest spool of wire and not have to dig if something gets broken/nicked.

I can echo how important it is to have a friend help. The trencher just about killed my shoulders because of pulling against the clay about half-way through and he was Jesus in my eyes when he finished up that part. By and large, the worst part is getting the trenches dug out.


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

acampinoob said:


> I just did a 100% PVC install on about 8,000sf with 11 zones. I just have to say, I think you made it harder on yourself going so deep. We have similar frost lines, but I only put mine down about 6-10 inches. We have to winterize and blow out the lines anyways, but I'd rather have the serviceability of the lines being at a reachable depth. Especially using the Blue-Locks, I wouldn't have put them as deep. I had a friend's neighbor that installed these professionally by hand and that was his motto anyways.
> 
> I'd also like to say use a ground saw https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Ground-Saw/EZ9100/index.htmlfor trenching. These things are great except for damp clay. If you have damp clay, it will kind of gum up and not throw out to the side like it's supposed to. But man, these things totally destroy roots and rocks. Part of my yard was super quick (the part that had rocks by the driveway) and other parts were slow (mostly the rest). I did a neat "hack" and used 2 belts to pull it along. One around my waist and another double-looped around the handle. It's not dangerous either, as these machines are pretty controllable and come to rest if you release the clutch.
> 
> ...


These are such great tips, and I'm glad that this thread can be geared towards "I wish I knew" type comments. I figured that 8-12" on laterals was conservative (most of the things on irrigationtutorials is conservative), so I'm glad that if anything I went too deep. I will say that after the install I realized I had totally forgotten a head in one zone, and adding the head only took about 35 minutes because that spot in particular was probably around 8" deep, so it wasn't bad at all. We'll see in the future how things play out, but if I don't get any busted lines due to freezing I'll be a happy man!

That ground saw looks awesome, and is likely worth a shot over a traditional trencher. The trencher I used lost every battle to roots (good thing I didn't have any other than the tree in back), so that saw looks like a great machine!

I may come back later and add some of your tips into the original post under a "tips from others" section so that future readers don't need to dive too deep to find the nuggets.


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## mwemaxxowner (May 30, 2020)

Very nice!


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## TSGarp007 (May 22, 2018)

I think what I used was a Toro TRX-16. It can not handle thick roots very well, but did a great job of scooping my sandy dirt out. I'd be worried that ground saw would have sand just fall right back into the trench. The TRX-16 drives under it's own power, so it just feels like taking a stroll around your yard.


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## ken-n-nancy (Jul 25, 2017)

Thanks, @GrassOnTheHills, for the sweet write-up. A lot of excellent advice and good tips in here.

I am curious as to why you buried the laterals so deep -- it is nice to have them deep enough to avoid hitting them when digging in the lawn for any reason (I've done that with a spading fork when trying to de-compact a compacted area from a septic tank installation truck), but are you far enough south that you are planning to not blow out the system every winter?

By the way, you may want to edit your first post to include a link to the posting in your lawn journal where you have some of the pictures of your installation -- pictures are nice to have readers understand exactly what you mean when you say that your whole lawn was dead while having trenches all over...

Great writeup, though -- thanks for making a positive contribution to the site in your first few months of being here!


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

ken-n-nancy said:


> I am curious as to why you buried the laterals so deep -- it is nice to have them deep enough to avoid hitting them when digging in the lawn for any reason (I've done that with a spading fork when trying to de-compact a compacted area from a septic tank installation truck), but are you far enough south that you are planning to not blow out the system every winter?


You're not the first person to mention this  @acampinoob said essentially the same here. Having both of you mention this, along with @acampinoob saying they knew someone who installed irrigation say they only went 6-10" indicates to me that a shallower depth is probably the "norm". That said, the reason I went as deep as I did in the first place was due to the research I did prior to the install. Specifically I read RainBird's design manual and irrigationtutorials.com. The latter is a bit easier to search, and here's what it says about lateral depth:



> Often poly tube is plowed into the soil with a "vibratory plow" machine, typically 6″ deep because that is fast and cheap. Unfortunately if you install the tube 6″ deep and then aerate the lawn you will poke holes in it. Plus 6″ deep tube is easy to stick a shovel through when gardening. Finally shallow tube tends to "float" to the surface in the winter when the water is blown out of it, especially if the ground gets saturated with water. You might plow a tube in at 6″ and discover it is 1″ or 2″ deep the next spring, especially if you didn't get a good crop of grass growing over with thick roots to hold it down. _I recommend poly tubes be at least 10″ deep._ All but the cheapest plows can install it 10″ deep, the plow just goes in a bit slower.


(emphasis mine)

I even did a little more Googl'ing after reading both of those and found the 8-12" depth cited on most sites, like this one. All in all, I figured that shooting for 12" and falling short at ~10" was acceptable, but it seems I may even be doing better than "acceptable"! Like I said to @acampinoob it sounds like I made my life much harder by doing so, but I am glad I can sleep easy knowing I likely don't need to worry about a frozen line if a cold snap comes through 



ken-n-nancy said:


> By the way, you may want to edit your first post to include a link to the posting in your lawn journal where you have some of the pictures of your installation -- pictures are nice to have readers understand exactly what you mean when you say that your whole lawn was dead while having trenches all over...


Great point. I will actually add a few pics to the end of the original post to help provide some context on the job site, etc.



ken-n-nancy said:


> Great writeup, though -- thanks for making a positive contribution to the site in your first few months of being here!


Thank you! This site is so awesome, and FULL of knowledgeable folks willing to help out. I just want to give back as much as I've received!


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## RVAGuy (Jul 27, 2020)

I do understand that different areas have different requirements for installs. Check out our government website that says to design for a frost depth of 18". I believe in northern VA the frost line is 24". Point is no one is installing that deep because it just doesn't make sense and isn't economically feasible.

http://www.richmondgov.com/planninganddevelopmentreview/PermitsInspectionsBureau.aspx

When we have a frost, the heads will freeze regardless of the depths of the laterals and as a result, piping depth isn't super important here.

The aerator people use around here only cores to 2.75" deep. Even a 6" deep main with a 1" pipe won't have a problem unless the pipes migrate as you mentioned. As for here,we have thick clay soil that isn't going anywhere. I totally agree if we have sandy soil though.

https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/mobile/PRO-Aerator/554918A/index.html


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

acampinoob said:


> I do understand that different areas have different requirements for installs. Check out our government website that says to design for a frost depth of 18". I believe in northern VA the frost line is 24". Point is no one is installing that deep because it just doesn't make sense and isn't economically feasible.
> 
> http://www.richmondgov.com/planninganddevelopmentreview/PermitsInspectionsBureau.aspx
> 
> ...


That all makes sense. Curious, how deep is your main? I shot for 16" but probably fell around an average of 12" or so. A good bit of lateral also runs through the same trenches as the mainline, so they benefited from me trying harder to get that trench deep.


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## RVAGuy (Jul 27, 2020)

All of my mains and laterals are at the same depth, probably 6-10". It was easier to just trench them all the same depth. I arrived at that depth by using the 13" ground saw at near full depth. My primary trench was dug by the ground saw, but then I came back and widened the trench with a spade and trench shovel a bit. In that primary tench I have a 1" main, and 3- 3/4" pipes that may end up with 6" of cover.


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

acampinoob said:


> All of my mains and laterals are at the same depth, probably 6-10". It was easier to just trench them all the same depth. I arrived at that depth by using the 13" ground saw at near full depth. My primary trench was dug by the ground saw, but then I came back and widened the trench with a spade and trench shovel a bit. In that primary tench I have a 1" main, and 3- 3/4" pipes that may end up with 6" of cover.


Gotcha. I also have a trench that has 3 (I think) laterals running through it, and one thing I read on (I think) the blu-lock install manual was that each lateral should have 2" of lateral space beside it/in between other pipes... 2"! So if you have 3 1" pipes in a trench, that trench would need to be 7" wide (1" inch for each pipe, 2" between pipes A & B and 2" between pipes B & C). That's insane. Needless to say I did not follow that. I assume it's to prevent things like rocks between pipes from breaking the pipes as they expand next to each other, but I was as careful as possible to avoid putting any rocks larger than 2" back into the trench, and I can't imagine blu-lock expanding enough to really cause a pipe to _crack_.


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## RVAGuy (Jul 27, 2020)

I didn't have to sweat that doing a PVC install and gluing everything. I would think the 2" is probably for serviceability of the fittings. But yeah, I would've done the same thing (if I went with the Blu Locks).


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## TSGarp007 (May 22, 2018)

GrassOnTheHills said:


> acampinoob said:
> 
> 
> > All of my mains and laterals are at the same depth, probably 6-10". It was easier to just trench them all the same depth. I arrived at that depth by using the 13" ground saw at near full depth. My primary trench was dug by the ground saw, but then I came back and widened the trench with a spade and trench shovel a bit. In that primary tench I have a 1" main, and 3- 3/4" pipes that may end up with 6" of cover.
> ...


I didn't know about any recommendation like that. Mine are right next to or on top of one another.


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## GrassOnTheHills (Jul 3, 2020)

TSGarp007 said:


> GrassOnTheHills said:
> 
> 
> > acampinoob said:
> ...


I imagine very few people (even pros) follow that. Likely one of those things manufacturers put in the spec to protect themselves from any liability...


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