Quick, easy, cheap sprinkler guards

The new house has a sprinkler system. Ended up having to replace 3 heads because they'd been chewed up by edgers/mowers, so I decided to do something about that. I don't like the concrete rings...they're bulky, wide, hard to cut into partial rings, you can't adjust their depth (they sit on the ground) so if the sprinkler head is taller than them, then they don't work, etc. 

I ended up buying a 10ft piece of 4" PVC "gravity sewer pipe" and using a miter saw to cut it into ~5-6" long pieces. It's schedule 10, so pretty thin, which makes it easier to hammer into the ground to the depth needed for each sprinkler. I did this with a piece of wood on top of them and a 4lb sledge hammer. I even cut some into partial rings for places where a full ring wouldn't fit, like when a sprinkler head was up against something concrete, e.g. driveway. Bonus: the pipe is green, so it doesn't look bad in the yard.

Partial ring

I think they look better than concrete rings. They're cheaper, too. Win-win-win

                                            

New house, new garage

Ugh, 4 months since the last update. Lots of stuff going on. We bought a new house, and I've finally started to put the garage together. I've been cleaning, painting the walls, purging junk, unpacking, setting up shelves, etc. 

These made it pretty much unscathed. Time to restart assembly of CubeXY!

Some of the rockets didn't make it...oops.

We had a lot of tools, but I purchased some more, mainly off of craigslist or fb marketplace. 

Mini hydraulic press, pressure washer

Wet tile saw

There's a table saw under there

Tooling cabinet I got from a machine shop auction.

Bins full of metal stock and tooling that was in the cabinet.
I'll be replacing these cabinets/workbench later.

Got a great deal on this Kennedy Toolbox

There's a craftsman bandsaw under there that I need
to reassemble. Bought new bolts for it.

32" radial drill press that I decided I don't really need and am trying to sell.

Nice floor standing drill press.

33 gal, 6HP compressor. New regulator, made the handle out of 
PVC+wooden dowel. The plastic cover came off another one. 

Lots of good stuff. The compressor didn't come with a handle, and the regulator was broken. It also didn't have the plastic pump cover, but I luckily found a very similar era one on FB marketplace for $30. Took the cover from that. I had already made the PVC handle, but I'll keep the metal handle. The $30 actually worked, despite being super rusty. Turns out that 9/10 of the parts are compatible, so I stripped them all of for spares: 

Spare compressor parts

That left the tank...eek. Very rusty. I really didn't want to make a bomb. Hydro-static testing is fairly safe because water is basically incompressible. As long as you get all of the air out, there won't be much stored energy in the tank. 

Lots of rust...the inside was worse.

Filling with garden hose after plugging the other two holes. 

Very full. Shook it around to get air bubbles out. 

Brass schrader valve in a 1/2 - 1/8 NPT adapter

$20 300 psi AAA brand tire inflator from amazon
Only air in the system was the compressor air hose.

I had to clamp the compressor in place to keep it from shaking around. There's a little USB snake camera held looking at the pressure gauge. I turned the compressor on, then got in my car and plugged it in while watching the camera feed on my phone. Unplugged it to turn it off. Let it get to 200 psi (1.6x 125 psi, which is operating pressure). Then held it there for 10 minutes. The schrader valve was leaking...could hear the hiss, it was about 5 psi/minute, so I had to repress a few times. But it passed! No water leaks. Total cost was about $35 for the compressor and fittings. You could probably figure out a way to do it without the $50 USB snake camera...maybe a gauge on an air hose T'd off of the schrader valve fitting. 

Not that those boards would do anything if it blew, 
but they made me feel better.

Used one of these to depressurize it. 

Sprayed water everywhere. 

Removed schrader valve and drain plug. 
30 gallons is a lot of water...

I'm letting it dry out now. Then I'll sandblast the outside, give it a coat of anti-rust primer, and paint the outside. Then the plan is to mount it on the wall as a second storage tank. The 33 gal compressor will normally be hooked up to it to provide air to my garage via a 50' retracting hose reel. When I need air elsewhere, I'll unhook the compressor, wheel it around, and leave this tank on the wall. 

My plan is to eventually turn the garage into a machine shop. I'll be insulating the ceiling and installing a window AC unit before next spring. Planning to save up for a CNC bed router, CNC mini-mill, and a CNC lathe. Possibly also a laser cutter. The garage is ~24'x24'x8', so it's not a lot of space, but I might be able to cram all of that in there. 

I also scored ~750ft of good quality Cat6 riser cable off craigslist for $25. I'm going to eventually wire the whole house with ethernet drops. 

We've done a ton of other projects...painting, new light fixtures, various minor repairs, etc. This was just what was in the garage this morning when I was taking pictures. I'll make some more posts later.