I knew I would most likely need to replace another sprinkler head at some point considering we now own a home with a sprinkler system, I just didn’t expect that to happen so quickly. Apparently, a sprinkler head cannot survive a battle with a lawn mower. Who knew? This is the second sprinkler head that I have replaced, and as I had hoped, this one went much more smoothly than the first. These are rotor head sprinklers that I am replacing with Rain Bird 3500 series heads. This time around the full replacement was much easier, including the edge alignment for the desired watering area. The one thing I am worried about is that this particular sprinkler still does not sit low enough in the lawn to be missed by the lawn mower. As such, at some point I may need to dig this back out and attempt to lower the line. This wasn’t the only project I undertook today though. I also patched the last of the holes in the garage, this one being over the back door. It was directly above the door frame and left the header beam visible. Because this is an outside wall I also added some insulation to the existing insulation as it was not full to the width of the hole. This insulation is probably less than the ideal amount for an exterior wall, but considering it was just for the garage and this hole has been there since we purchased the house, I figure it is fine and some more is better than what was there. I’m very proud of myself for all the work I have accomplished and learned how to do, while I do not consider myself a handyman by any stretch of the imagination, I still feel good knowing there are some things I can do.

Today was a productive day for house work. Due to yesterday’s long travel hours back from the west coast, my manager told me to take today off. So after getting some needed extra sleep I began work on a couple of projects. The first was my first attempt at replacing a sprinkler head on my own. The actual work of digging out the failing head and physically replacing it with the new one was rather simple. The part I struggled with was properly aligning the left and right edges of the watering area along with the height and distance of the spray. I previously had a head replaced by someone else who ran a side business performing this work and he made it seem a lot simpler than I found it to be. However, after some struggling and a bit of googling I was able to get it configured properly. If I ever need to do another one, which seems likely all things considered, hopefully this experience will make it a little easier.  The second project is something that I am getting good at, that being patching holes within the garage. This particular one was a bit tricky because it was located above the cabinets above the sink to the left of the house door. Additionally there is a wire conduit that runs directly over the area that needed to be patched. I was able to loosen the conduit enough to get the patch piece in place though, and then put everything back in its original location. I now only have one hole left to patch and that is over the back door. I’m getting good at this….

Today I circled back to the sink in the garage, and am happy to report that I had better luck this time around. I have purchased a new faucet that also came with a new hose and sprayer and installed that into the garage. While it was a simple project, it was not without its issues. The first issue I had, was with the installation of the new water shut off valves that I purchased to install inline under the sink. The issue (and really every issue with this project) revolved around getting the fittings tightly connected. Even with Teflon tape it seemed like no matter how tight I got the connections it just wasn’t tight enough.  The reason for this is the water connection that I was installing everything into. The pipe is just a free-floating copper pipe that connects to the larger water pipe in the basement and then runs out to the garage. As such the pipe being able to move around fairly freely and not having any backing bolts made it difficult to tighten the fittings as much as needed. Eventually, however, I persevered and was able to tighten the fittings securely enough that they no longer leaked. This was not the end though, for when I turned the sink on to test the water I discovered that I had swapped the hot and cold connections; so now the hot was on the right and the cold was on the left. It was a simple fix that required me to swap the flex hose from each faucet to the opposite source pipe. This of course reintroduced the issue of getting these fittings properly tightened again though, it was a little easier the second time but that may be due to expectation though. Regardless, the sink is now fully functional without any leaks anywhere in the assembly, and the shut off valves work as expected! Oh, and I also labeled the pipes to better indicate which is hot and which is cold for any future needs.