# Jerry-Rigged Vacation Sprinklers



## OnyxsLawn (Mar 15, 2018)

Problem: I want to keep my current schedule of watering my seedlings every 2 hours during the day but not at night. I currently just set the rain delay to 12 hours every night but i'm not going to be home for 4 days. I don't want to water through the night and don't want to stop watering as its going to be a hot weekend.

Solution: Use my timer from the front sprinkler-system-in-a-box (Don't need to water the front while i'm gone) and connect it in series with my back yard timer. The idea is that the first timer opens a valve for 12 hours during the day while the second one waters every 2 hours.

Another problem: my cheap timers will only stay open for a max of 6 hours and only start once per day for each zone.

Another Solution: 


I used 2 zones and some creatively sourced hoses and Y... may or may not be taken from our washer and dryer. Anyways it looks like a mess of hoses but it gets the job done for all of us without inground sprinklers.


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## Ral1121 (Mar 19, 2018)

You could try doing what I did. I used orbit battery powered timers and valves to make my own system. The orbit timers allow two programs with a Max of 4 zones on each. Here is a link to my thread that shows what I built.

https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3095

I built one for each spicket on my house so I could run potentially 8 zones through my 2 spickets.


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## OnyxsLawn (Mar 15, 2018)

Ooo I like that a lot. I went with parts i had right now. Plan on doing an inground system in the front this fall but don't want to dig up the new grass in the back yard this year to put sprinklers in the back (plus my backyard will be way more expensive). I'll run the valves for it with the rest so I could totally do a system similar to what you did. Thanks for the tip!


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Very creative! A double and gate circuit.


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## chrismar (May 25, 2017)

Whatever you do, just make sure you put fresh batteries in it (if it's battery powered) before you head out. The last thing you want to come home to is sprinklers that have been on for so long your neighbor had to come turn off the spigot.


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## craigdt (Apr 21, 2018)

I have 3 of those Melnor timers.

They have been critical to the success of my lawn since I don't have in ground sprinkling.


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## OnyxsLawn (Mar 15, 2018)

@chrismar Sounds like you had a bad surprise when you got home. Hope I don't. I would've thought these types of valves are fail closed but i guess they are cheap and probably just fail at whatever they were last on. Good to know not to push the batteries close to 0 though.


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## LawnNerd (Sep 2, 2017)

That is some Jerry rigged GOLD! I'll be stealing this idea in the future (minus the washing machine hose. That might be a line i don't cross with the wife).


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