How-to: Move A Sprinkler Head | Sundrops And Starflowers

The area in this picture is going to be a vegetable garden. The grass has already been killed using Round-up and now the sprinkler heads need to be moved from the back of the area to the front of the area where the grass is still growing. (The vegetable garden will get its own drip system, but that’s a different problem.) I marked the sprinkler head with landscape flags. I also marked the adjacent heads. When working on a sprinkler systems you want each sprinkler head to water the head that’s next to it. That’s called head-to-head coverage. It’s really important that before you move the heads you figure out where you’re going with them and that you maintain the appropriate distance between the head that you’re moving and all those that are adjacent to it so that you still have head-to-head coverage.

I’ve removed the dead grass from around the sprinkler head to dig it up. If the head you want to move is in the lawn and you want to keep the grass there, you will want to dig up large chunks of grass. Keep the soil on the roots—digging as deep as you reasonably can. As you go, set the pieces of grass aside in the same order you dug them up like you’re putting together a puzzle. If you can, put the pieces in a shady location and water them. Water repeatedly if it’s a real hot day or if the job is taking longer than you thought.

In this case, it’s not important to save the grass—it’s dead and I want it dead.

This is what you’ll find when you dig up the sprinkler head. The body of the sprinkler head is connected to a flexible, black tubing called funny pipe or swing pipe. This is what you will use to extend your sprinkler head.

As I was digging, I smacked the funny pipe with my shovel a few times and now it has some dings in it. That’s not a big deal. You are likely going to need additional funny pipe anyway and it’s easy to replace if it is actually punctured.

I’m going to continue digging back to find the lateral line since that is the direction I want to move the head. If you were going to move the head either further back or to one side, you would not need to dig any farther than this. Skip ahead to inserting the coupler to change the funny pipe.