So today I was trying to work on my front yard. My front yard for the past 3 years has not had a really good water coverage area. I would say that maybe at most 65% of my yard gets water. And I could not figure out why there was such low water flow from my sprinkler system. So I started to take out sprinklers in the system to see if that increases the pressure in the water. However, what made me finally realize my water pressure was really low was when I bought this 15 dollar rotary pressure water sprinkler. (the ones that rotate around 0-180 deg). With the rotary pressure not getting enough water, I went to the sprinkler heads to see if I could allow more water in.
If you see that little black round circle thing. I started spinning it thinking that it was part of the pressure. But what it really is instead is the bypass to open the system on and off. If there is no power, I can just turn that, and the system turns on. If I turn it too much, the water starts coming out of the hole.
Then after that didn’t work, I started turning the whole cover off the valve to see what is inside. So once I took it out, I realized that the water valve was not turned off. Water started to come pouring out of the open valve, and flooding into the hole I had dug. So I went to turn off the water valve that was going into the house, and that is when I realized that the water shutoff valve did not connect directly to the sprinkler system. The shutoff valve was somewhere else.
Hoping to stop the water, I put the valve back on and hoped that it would close the water. However, the valve would not go back on because of the water coming out and messing up the spring. I was thinking I would need to call the water department to turn off my water. However, since it was only around 5pm, I still had an hour or two to figure out what to do.
Here is a picture of how did I had originally dug in. If you can’t really tell, I dug down at least 12-14 inches.
So I was able to get the valves cover back in, but the water was now going through the sprinkler system out to my sprinklers. My grass was watered for a good 1 hour while I tried to dig deeper into my sprinkler system. I dug another 12 inches before I could find the red valve. It was a tough dig, because there was so much mud water everywhere. However, one I got to the valve, I realized it was only 1/4 open, and when I opened it 3/4 the water pressure was amazing. 
If you look at this picture, you can see just to the left of the hose, the faint outline of the valve (right of the pipe that is cut and sticking out of the mud.
So I then went to home depot the next day and spent 2 hours prepping the valves to be installed. I actually had to do it twice because I didn’t actually tighten the pvc enough to the valve actuator before I installed it the first time, so it was leaking a lot. The good news about me having to redo it, was that I ended up putting the valves higher than all the sprinkler heads, so there is no extra back pressure.
So after all this hard work, I got all of the sprinkler system in, and planted a plant in the front. So I am so excited knowing that my front yard will be growing well now.
Here is the end results, the bush hides the valve behind it. So it looks really pretty.
