Yet Another Broken Sprinkler Head

Southern California is a desert. Grass does not really grow here. One of the adjustments of moving from back east is presence of sprinklers everywhere. Every yard, every strip of grass has sprinklers on it. Every house has some kind of crude sprinkler system. When I was a kid, one went out and "played in the yard". Today, in Southern California, if one plays in the yard, one is very likely to bust a sprinkler head within five minutes.

A bust sprinkler head is a site to behold. Water gushes out of the ground like a geyser, ten feet into the California night sky. Because sprinklers usually go off in the middle of the night, it takes about three weeks to realize that the sprinkler head is off. The easiest way to discover this is to observe the only muddy yard in the neighborhood, a neighborhood that is in fact naturally a desert where no mud should naturally a exist.

Naturally, I come to the realization that I have shot $600 dollars of water into the night sky over the course of the three weeks. My theory is that $1 billion dollars of water is shot into the night sky every year because of busted sprinkler heads. Wait, that's just my house...

Fixing the Sprinkler

(Above) The infamous sprinkler head. Will it hold?

One of the advantages of renting a place is you don't have to fix stuff all the time. Something breaks, you call the landlord. Something is creaky, you call the landlord. Something needs to be replaced, you call the landlord. Some people like to fix things and repair things and tinker in the garage. I am not one of those people. I am unhandy with cars, I repair things out of necessity and survival. I am glad for those who are handy, I am proud to share a planet with the handy, I am just not one of you. One of the joys of moving to California is that I haven't had to cut the grass, I haven't had to shovel any snow, and I haven't had to crawl on a roof to repair a leak.

Despite this small pleasure, I've learned that sometimes it is best to not agitate the landlord. So I find that I still end up fixing stuff for the most part and just leave the ol' landlord be.

The problem is that I when I moved to California five years ago, I didn't bring all of my tools. As a homeowner back in Maryland, I had acquired a manly amount of tools and could fix things pretty well. I wasn't the handiest of men, but my step dad had every tool under the sun and I could generally get things fixed. When I moved, I didn't have enough space on the moving truck for every last piece of metal I had collected over the years, so I brought what I thought I might need. Why is that problem? Example:

A) I run the car over a sprinkler head near the driveway.

B) I'm from back east, so I'm not used to sprinkler heads everywhere.

C) Water starts gushing out.

D) I don't have a shovel to dig out the pipe, so I use a plastic salad spoon.

E) I had to buy the proper piping, special glue, and a new sprinkler head and am a little short 'o cash this month and wasn't too keen on purchasing a bunch of specialized sprinkler repair tools.

F) I'm not a plumber.