Another day at the golf course

       Monday at lunchtime we received a phone call from the Pro Shop. Steve Elkins called to report a sprinkler head leaking near the 14th tee at the Players Club. We knew that a small leak above ground almost certainly never translates to an easy fix.
       We dug a trench surrounding the sprinkler only to find the pipe below engulfed in roots from the nearby pine tree. Our Irrigation Tech, Leo Dowling, spent the rest of the afternoon pruning roots and trenching in an effort to expose the damaged pipe. He eventually discovered the sight of the leak, but was still unable to determine the exact cause.

The sight of the leak. At the joint of the pipe and a coupling.

        Tuesday morning, with the help of our backhoe, we continued to dig in hopes of locating the problem. Within an hour we had pinpointed the root that was causing the leak.

The arrow shows the root that has been growing near our pipe. The root had grown so aggressively  that it shifted our pipe causing the coupling to leak.

Closer picture of the root.

        Our next step was to remove the root that caused our leak. After carefully cutting the root we proceeded to clean all obstructions from the area. We removed multiple roots that were woven in between the pipe and the irrigation wires. We then installed a cinder block into the trench. This will help to prevent the pipe from future shifting.

Repaired pipe with thrust block installed. The green arrow shows the location of the tree. 

Another angle with thrust block in place.

         Once we had the trust prevention in place, the roots clear and the leak fixed we back filled the trench. We removed all debris and roots from the soil and carefully refilled the trench. We leveled the sprinkler head and placed an eight inch PVC pipe around its working parts. This pipe will help prevent tree root encroachment into the electrical and hydraulic fittings on the sprinkler.

Near finished product with 8" PVC enclosure installed.

       The last step will be to level the soil and replace the mulch that we displaced. This type of leak is common with the aggressive growing nature of pine tree roots. But to us, this is just another day at the golf course.