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I bought a foreclosed house that already had drip irrigation installed. The system can be turned on via a control panel in the garage. The previous owner was angry that he lost his house so he snipped many of the irrigation tubes before leaving. I've ripped out most of the snipped tubes and thrown them away, in preparation of redoing the whole drip irrigation system. What remains are these tower like structures spaced about 7 feet away of each other.

  1. What purpose do these serve?
  2. Are they connected to my water supply? So should I be wary of flooding the backyward by pulling these things out?
  3. Should I replace them with new ones or are they too expensive / time consuming to replace?

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JoJo
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3 Answers3

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It looks like a head used to convert from irrigation spray nozzles or bubblers to drip irrigation so you waste less water.

They come in several styles:

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You replace the spray or bubbler head on the 1/2 plastic stand pipe with it and push the drip tubing onto the connectors. The drip tubing terminates with drip emitters or bubblers tailored to the planting.

The units should be on an irrigation zone controlled by a solenoid valve connected to your irrigation timer. Somewhere on the other side of the solenoid valves should be a pair of backflow preventers and a water shutoff valve. The other side of the valve will attach to your house water system.

Fiasco Labs
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I'd suggest doing a little digging, and/or turning on the water. Something that looks a little bit like that is just a stake that holds emitters in place - but it certainly could be a distribution point that feeds several emitter lines. If you turn on the water and water comes out, then the latter, and it's attached to a pipe.

Ecnerwal
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  • I was afraid to dig because if it was actually serving the water, I might burst a pipe. – JoJo Dec 30 '14 at 01:18
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It looks similar to what I have on my misting system, they connect to the main trunk line and allow smaller lines to be run off of it, similar to a splitter like you would put on an outdoor water faucet to attach two hoses. The knobs allow the ports to be opened and closed individually.

Apoc
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  • On mine, it looks like I can connect 3 tubes to the top. What do I do I want less than 3 directions for the water to go? Also, if I split is less than 3 ways, does that mean the remaining paths will shoot water more powerfully? – JoJo Dec 30 '14 at 04:13