Oddly Satisfying - Cleaning Buried Sprinkler Valve Box 

Thanks for the kind words! You can also put landscape fabric down between the rocks and dirt for a more permanent fix.

Haha, I hope it helps! Another tip is to line the box with landscape fabric before adding the stone for some extra protection over time!

@@CopperCreekCuts Are you talking around the inside of the box or the outside? I have several boxes to work on. Thanks!

Thank you for watching and commenting! That means a lot to me. I hope you are able to get your irrigation straightened out! :)

Haha, many thanks! :)

Excellent tips! Especially about keeping the box on. About 30 seconds after I pulled it and started digging again, I was like, "I have made a mistake" :) Thanks for watching and commenting!

Oh gosh, 6X the work! I am sending some energy drinks your way! :D

Good choice, that will help with drainage and hopefully keep dirt from building up too much. Thank you for watching and commenting! :)

I hope you liked it!

Someone commented and said crushed rock would be better because pea gravel compacts too much. Not sure if that is true or not, but might be worth researching! I am glad you liked the video, and appreciate your comment! I don't think I rotated them, I just pulled the 'levers' or 'handles' off of them to clean them better. If I am wrong and I did open them up, it didn't matter because the water was off at the backflow preventer, which is always upstream of the valve box (which means if it is off, there is no water to the valves). Let me know if you have any other questions, or consider emailing me. My email is in my description.

For rock, 'crushed clear' (no small pieces, sand or dust) might be better; it will drain well, and pea gravel might make it into the valves when working on them.

Thank you for the kind words! Good eye, and you were close! Those actually were river rocks (maybe river pebbles because of their size), and yes, they were there for drainage! :)

Thank you for that question. That's exactly what I came here for.

You absolutely can, not a stupid question at all. If all your wiring is in good shape you shouldn't hurt anything. If you blast it at full pressure and your wiring is in bad shape MAYBE you blast a wire nut off that will need to be replaced, but that is a worst case stretch of the imagination. I used a very slow stream because I didn't want to flood the box with water, which would obscure my vision of everything.

@@CopperCreekCuts thanks for the quick response. Nice work, very satisfying to watch #OCD

Also those are not normal wire nuts.. they are filled with a vaseline-like gel to keep the bare wires waterproofed. Only use the waterproof wire nuts for underground wiring.

Yes, it is. Your soil composition plays into it. Sandier soils 'flow' over time and fill voids.

Mine got filled by moles.😏😞

Haha! Each one of the black round things is a 'valve' which controls a different 'zone' of sprinklers. So maybe the front yard runs off the first zone, the back yard off another, then maybe all the flower beds on a third, etc. etc.

Copper Creek Cuts ,Thanks for explaining!

The sprinkler timer sends low voltage power to the solenoid and causes it to open thus allowing water to pass through it and out to the sprinkler heads. (I've always wanted to say thus)

aguyandhiscomputer, explained clearly! Thank you!

aguyandhiscomputer *Thusly, I think, ergo, I am. Henceforth and posthaste, carpe diem.* Ohhhh, you're right. That is satisfying! :)

iAndy No, it is low voltage. I wouldn't grab it with soaking wet hands, but it won't kill you. If you feel uncomfortable just unplug your controller in the garage or basement or side of house, wherever yours is, since that is what gives power to the wires in the valve box.

Definitely unplug the system before you do this. Not to protect yourself, but to protect the system from short circuits while you're attacking it with a trowel. The time-lapse photography here makes it look easier than it is. You'll find roots, stones, etc that you have to bash a way at, will probably damage some wiring, and it would be better if it were not energized when you do.

Super sandy soil there, so I can only assume it got itself covered after a few months or a year of being left on its own. Can't say why it was installed that low. My only guess is they didn't feel like bringing it up from the level of the well supply (and I don't know enough about sprinkler design/installation to know if you can/should or if that is even a reason to build it low).

It could for sure!

I did exactly that recently but it’s messy and a pain. I resorted to digging the hole bigger then using a small garden hand shovel to dig the clay out under the valves.

You could dig deeper and rest them on cinder blocks/bricks/pavers.

I think almost two hours. The digging was a nightmare!

@@CopperCreekCuts thanks. I ended up doing it half as nicely as yours, if that, and it took 30. Good enough to get to the solenoid and then some.

The digging underneath the pipes was the slowest part. Probably one of those 80/20 things where the last 20% of dirt took 80% of the time! :(

@@buttstains 30 HOURS? I was about to start on mine ... you're scaring me.

@@jharuni Scaring me too-either the labor it will take me or the cost of paying someone. I am wondering if I can buy a wet vac or pump, loosing up the dirt, flood the hole, and vac or pump out a lot of the slurry. Or I wonder if I might after a week without rain, loosen it up and use a leaf blower to blast out some of it then,with the intake attachment for bagging, turn the blower around and draw it out.

That sounds like the biggest. Pain. Ever! So sorry that happened!

Not black plastic, that will retain water in the box. Landscape fabric under crushed clear gravel.

I used garden cloth so water can drain out and keep soil from coming in. Then added in 1 minus crushed rock on top of the cloth.

Probably! Such is life.

Would it be a bad idea to put landscape fabric below, around and above the gravel? Would that reduce the speed at which this fills up with soil again and make it easier to clean out when it does?

This is what I’m concerned about. Am I making my life harder? Next time I’ll have to dig up dirt AND rocks.

@@aaron_hardy Yep, it is a problem. It is near impossible to keep all the dirt out. But one thing I found has helped to reduce the accumulation over time is to wrap the box lid cover in plastic (old plastic bags), then trim the excess with a utility knife so the plastic doesn't show. Also, stuff some old plastic bags below the cover and use it to cover all the valves. It isn't perfect but it does slow down the process of dirt getting in. I suspect dirt builds up from not only the top (which the plastic slows down) but also infiltrates from the bottom of the box with a good rain and grows from the bottom. This is problem needing a good invention. Good luck.

@@gototcm It is filled up with dirt by moles, shrews, voles or any underground digging rodents, I seal the bottom with brick and where the pipes go through I use black Great Stuff and these boxes stay clean forever unless you have water that runs in then you must make sure you channel the water somewhere else so it does not flow over the box and make sure that the top of the box is above ground level so that dirt does not wash into the lid. then I pack the top with Bubble wrap so it is easy to remove when I need to adjust or to change a valve.