**The Importance of Regular Sprinkler Blowouts**

To ensure that your sprinkler system is functioning properly and efficiently, it's essential to perform regular blowouts. These blowouts involve blowing out any residual moisture from the pipes to prevent freezing and damage during the winter months.

**Equipment and Preparation**

Before starting a sprinkler blowout, you'll need access to a compressor that can provide the necessary air pressure. The ideal air pressure for most systems is between 75 PSI. It's crucial to set your compressor just below this range to avoid rupturing any lines. A portable air hose with a valve is also necessary for turning the air on and off.

**The Blowout Process**

To begin the blowout process, you'll need to locate the valves that control each section of the sprinkler system. These valves can be electronic or manual, and some systems may have timers. The goal is to open the valves in a specific order to ensure that all sections are cleared of moisture before closing the last valve.

Once you've identified the correct sequence for your system, turn on the air pressure using the compressor. Start by opening the smallest valve at the top, which will blow out any remaining moisture from this section. As the air flows through the pipes, you'll notice that each subsequent valve opens and releases its contents. This process may take several minutes, depending on the length of your sprinkler system.

**Safety Precautions**

Throughout the blowout process, it's essential to exercise caution to avoid damage or injury. Make sure to turn off the air pressure immediately if you need to stop for any reason. If your compressor is too small, consider stopping and allowing it to catch up again before continuing the blowout.

**Finalizing the Blowout**

Once all sections of the sprinkler system have been cleared of moisture, close each valve in the reverse order that they were opened. Leave each valve slightly ajar to allow any residual moisture to drain out if freezing occurs during the winter months.

**Tips and Recommendations**

If you're not comfortable performing your own sprinkler blowout, consider hiring a professional to do it for you. However, by watching videos or taking notes on this process, you may be able to learn enough to perform the job yourself in future years. Additionally, visiting your local nursery or gardening store can provide valuable insights into different types of sprinkler systems and how to troubleshoot common issues.

**Conclusion**

Regular sprinkler blowouts are a crucial maintenance task that ensures the longevity and efficiency of your irrigation system. By following these steps and taking the necessary precautions, you'll be able to keep your sprinklers in top condition all year round. Visit our website at Hostdasimprovement do.com for more articles and resources on gardening and landscaping.

**Getting Started**

For those new to sprinkler blowouts, start by checking out our YouTube channel, which offers a wide range of videos on various topics related to gardening and landscaping. You can also subscribe to our channel and visit our website for access to exclusive content, including articles and links to useful resources.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Shannon from house improvements.com and today we're going to do something a little different for you and we're going to give you a maintenance tip or I guess it's kind of a maintenance tip we're going to show you how to blow out your underground uh lawn sprinklers uh so typically a lot of people will pay somebody you know 20 30 bucks or whatever to uh come and blow out their sprinklers for them and get them ready for winter this is something you can easily do yourself uh basically as long as you have an air compressor or can borrow an air compressor you can more than likely do this on your own and uh save that 20 or $30 and go out for lunch so uh in this particular setup we've got a underground system outside obviously and it's on a timer system so in that case what we'd want to do is start out by taking the timer turning it to the off position from whatever position you've got it in now which in this case was automatic um so again just depending whether you have actually have automated system or not doesn't really matter if you do just turn off the timer so it's not trying to turn itself on um the next thing we want to do is we want to drain the actual water uh from the outside wherever it goes to the outside and actually uh enters your uh your valve system to the interior of the house so that you don't end up freezing that water line so in this home uh the line comes from I believe across the house the other side of the house and it comes down to here and they've got in a valve here to turn off the water supply which is what this part is so it would be supplying from here we're going to turn it off and it's got this little drain on the side and what happens is when I open this drain all the water from this point all the way back to where it goes out the house to the valve out there uh will drain out to this hole so uh not too difficult we just want to something here to to catch that water as we drain this one uh it's going to take a few buckets probably to uh drain the whole line but you want to uh just turn this little little valve on the side here and uh get the water sorry elb was in the way you couldn't see from my elbow but I'm just turning that uh it should be just finger tight but you might need a pair of pliers on it to turn it and we're just opening it up till the water drains I'm not just sure I don't want it to come right out because it's just going to spray right out so I'm just loosening it off there we go we're getting it running there so you can see the water in this case is just kind of dribbling down the side we've it's convenient we've got an elbow here that kind of creates a spot for it to drip off and into the can so what we do is just drain that rate completely out uh probably speed it up a little bit more than this and uh drain that whole line until we have nothing now another thing we did off camera is we opened the valve at the outside of the house so that it creates uh a chance for some air to get behind that water and help it drain out a little quicker okay so we'll just continue draining this once we have that complete we're going to go to the outside and uh do our actual blowout Okay so we've come outside and uh here's the other end of that line that we just drained so I'll just uh I guess I already did just close this valve back up again just we're not pressurizing that system into the house we will open it back up though when we're all done but anyways I've got it closed um now the system here before you they would turn this on and this would fill up the water down to the valves down below so what we're going to do is we're going to unhook this garden hose and we're going to use this valve to help with blowing out our uh our system now I did State before that really all you needed was a compressor that might have been a little misleading you need a compressor uh enough uh air hose to get over here and possibly some type of fittings put together to attach to your s your sprinkler system now if you've had people blowing your system out before there may even be a setup there already you just have to get the right kind of adapter to do it now this is a little bit of a couple different things put together uh just to make this really simple so uh you know just rig up whatever you need to make your own system work so I'm just going to put that on there I'm going to open this valve because uh we need that open and we've got our compressor set to about 70 lbs uh most of these lines um even on this one it states right here on this tubing that's it's good to 75 PSI so we're we've got the compressor set just a a hair below that whoops what am I doing uh just so that we don't rupture a line now uh here's our air hose coming right from the compressor this valve here will turn our air on and off right now I've got it off I'm just going to hook that up for right now okay so at that point what I'm going to do is uh go down into the the little man hole here where the valves themselves are now remember this is uh got electric timers on it so it's got an electronic valve there's a pair of valves here running the front yard so if you look at the valves what we've got is you've got a small little uh on this brand anyways you've got a small little valve right here and that's the one we're going to use for doing the blowout we're going to actually open it and then when we're all complete we're going to open the main valve which would be this one and we're just going to leave it a quarter turn open so that if any residual moisture is in there and freezes it doesn't actually break the valve so all we want to do is uh go up here and we're going to turn on our air pressure right there so that's Now power powering up or airing up our whole system we'll go back down to this first valve and I'm going to turn this little thumb screw here whichever way it goes this way and that should uh pops our sprinklers up out front there and you can see that it's blowing out the moisture this one nearest to us is just about out of water already and uh as it goes down the line there you'll see the middle one run out and then finally the last one and this takes a could take up to a minute or so it just depends how long your line is okay so once all that moisture is blowing out we're just going to turn that valve off again right there and I'm going to open up this second one as well we would do this this next one do all of them do the main drain and then open up the big valve on this particular I believe this is a Rainbird you should see uh probably a little more moisture come out but it won't take nearly as long just let them blow right out till they're not even fogging anymore if your compressor is a little small baller you might actually have to stop and let it catch up again so that end one's just about out it's just getting the last few drops there it's pretty much done okay so what I'll do here is turn off the pressure turn off our air pressure our heads all drop back down in the ground okay and uh again you want to do this to every valve that you've got there once you're all complete them all just make sure that you open up each one of these valves a little bit they should be left cracked open for the winter so any residual moisture will uh just drain out of them if it freezes not drain out but it won't uh hopefully wreck anything when it freezes okay so that's the main the main idea there then when you're all done all you need to do is uh take off your your apparatus here for getting the air in like so and you want to just crack open all your valves here for the winter this one was already open so just leave your valves cracked open and uh then that way like I said a couple times already if if any moisture is in there and freezes it won't hurt your valves or it shouldn't so so this is just one particular setup uh your setup could obviously be quite different you might have a manifold of valves here right on the wall above the ground or whatever it's just a matter of looking at your system figuring out you know just how it works and uh you know even if you want to maybe you still get that guy to come this year and do it and you're home and you can kind of watch what he does see what his system is and uh the next years down the road maybe you'll be able to do it on your own and save a bit of money so I'm glad that you're able to watch our video today on uh sprinkler blowout and uh we've got tons other videos here on our YouTube channel you can subscribe to our Channel and uh you know watch them all you can go to our our website at Host dasimprovement do.com and check out all our interesting articles and other links we have there we've got the Forum there as well so if you have any questions on this go to The Forum and post your question up I'll be sure to answer it and uh we're also on Twitter and Facebook so you can check us out on a few different spots thanks a lot for watching todayhi I'm Shannon from house improvements.com and today we're going to do something a little different for you and we're going to give you a maintenance tip or I guess it's kind of a maintenance tip we're going to show you how to blow out your underground uh lawn sprinklers uh so typically a lot of people will pay somebody you know 20 30 bucks or whatever to uh come and blow out their sprinklers for them and get them ready for winter this is something you can easily do yourself uh basically as long as you have an air compressor or can borrow an air compressor you can more than likely do this on your own and uh save that 20 or $30 and go out for lunch so uh in this particular setup we've got a underground system outside obviously and it's on a timer system so in that case what we'd want to do is start out by taking the timer turning it to the off position from whatever position you've got it in now which in this case was automatic um so again just depending whether you have actually have automated system or not doesn't really matter if you do just turn off the timer so it's not trying to turn itself on um the next thing we want to do is we want to drain the actual water uh from the outside wherever it goes to the outside and actually uh enters your uh your valve system to the interior of the house so that you don't end up freezing that water line so in this home uh the line comes from I believe across the house the other side of the house and it comes down to here and they've got in a valve here to turn off the water supply which is what this part is so it would be supplying from here we're going to turn it off and it's got this little drain on the side and what happens is when I open this drain all the water from this point all the way back to where it goes out the house to the valve out there uh will drain out to this hole so uh not too difficult we just want to something here to to catch that water as we drain this one uh it's going to take a few buckets probably to uh drain the whole line but you want to uh just turn this little little valve on the side here and uh get the water sorry elb was in the way you couldn't see from my elbow but I'm just turning that uh it should be just finger tight but you might need a pair of pliers on it to turn it and we're just opening it up till the water drains I'm not just sure I don't want it to come right out because it's just going to spray right out so I'm just loosening it off there we go we're getting it running there so you can see the water in this case is just kind of dribbling down the side we've it's convenient we've got an elbow here that kind of creates a spot for it to drip off and into the can so what we do is just drain that rate completely out uh probably speed it up a little bit more than this and uh drain that whole line until we have nothing now another thing we did off camera is we opened the valve at the outside of the house so that it creates uh a chance for some air to get behind that water and help it drain out a little quicker okay so we'll just continue draining this once we have that complete we're going to go to the outside and uh do our actual blowout Okay so we've come outside and uh here's the other end of that line that we just drained so I'll just uh I guess I already did just close this valve back up again just we're not pressurizing that system into the house we will open it back up though when we're all done but anyways I've got it closed um now the system here before you they would turn this on and this would fill up the water down to the valves down below so what we're going to do is we're going to unhook this garden hose and we're going to use this valve to help with blowing out our uh our system now I did State before that really all you needed was a compressor that might have been a little misleading you need a compressor uh enough uh air hose to get over here and possibly some type of fittings put together to attach to your s your sprinkler system now if you've had people blowing your system out before there may even be a setup there already you just have to get the right kind of adapter to do it now this is a little bit of a couple different things put together uh just to make this really simple so uh you know just rig up whatever you need to make your own system work so I'm just going to put that on there I'm going to open this valve because uh we need that open and we've got our compressor set to about 70 lbs uh most of these lines um even on this one it states right here on this tubing that's it's good to 75 PSI so we're we've got the compressor set just a a hair below that whoops what am I doing uh just so that we don't rupture a line now uh here's our air hose coming right from the compressor this valve here will turn our air on and off right now I've got it off I'm just going to hook that up for right now okay so at that point what I'm going to do is uh go down into the the little man hole here where the valves themselves are now remember this is uh got electric timers on it so it's got an electronic valve there's a pair of valves here running the front yard so if you look at the valves what we've got is you've got a small little uh on this brand anyways you've got a small little valve right here and that's the one we're going to use for doing the blowout we're going to actually open it and then when we're all complete we're going to open the main valve which would be this one and we're just going to leave it a quarter turn open so that if any residual moisture is in there and freezes it doesn't actually break the valve so all we want to do is uh go up here and we're going to turn on our air pressure right there so that's Now power powering up or airing up our whole system we'll go back down to this first valve and I'm going to turn this little thumb screw here whichever way it goes this way and that should uh pops our sprinklers up out front there and you can see that it's blowing out the moisture this one nearest to us is just about out of water already and uh as it goes down the line there you'll see the middle one run out and then finally the last one and this takes a could take up to a minute or so it just depends how long your line is okay so once all that moisture is blowing out we're just going to turn that valve off again right there and I'm going to open up this second one as well we would do this this next one do all of them do the main drain and then open up the big valve on this particular I believe this is a Rainbird you should see uh probably a little more moisture come out but it won't take nearly as long just let them blow right out till they're not even fogging anymore if your compressor is a little small baller you might actually have to stop and let it catch up again so that end one's just about out it's just getting the last few drops there it's pretty much done okay so what I'll do here is turn off the pressure turn off our air pressure our heads all drop back down in the ground okay and uh again you want to do this to every valve that you've got there once you're all complete them all just make sure that you open up each one of these valves a little bit they should be left cracked open for the winter so any residual moisture will uh just drain out of them if it freezes not drain out but it won't uh hopefully wreck anything when it freezes okay so that's the main the main idea there then when you're all done all you need to do is uh take off your your apparatus here for getting the air in like so and you want to just crack open all your valves here for the winter this one was already open so just leave your valves cracked open and uh then that way like I said a couple times already if if any moisture is in there and freezes it won't hurt your valves or it shouldn't so so this is just one particular setup uh your setup could obviously be quite different you might have a manifold of valves here right on the wall above the ground or whatever it's just a matter of looking at your system figuring out you know just how it works and uh you know even if you want to maybe you still get that guy to come this year and do it and you're home and you can kind of watch what he does see what his system is and uh the next years down the road maybe you'll be able to do it on your own and save a bit of money so I'm glad that you're able to watch our video today on uh sprinkler blowout and uh we've got tons other videos here on our YouTube channel you can subscribe to our Channel and uh you know watch them all you can go to our our website at Host dasimprovement do.com and check out all our interesting articles and other links we have there we've got the Forum there as well so if you have any questions on this go to The Forum and post your question up I'll be sure to answer it and uh we're also on Twitter and Facebook so you can check us out on a few different spots thanks a lot for watching today\n"