I Feel Like An Absolute Idiot

As I said in the title, I feel like an absolute idiot. Why you ask? I will tell you [whether you ask or not ]

This has been a very hot and very dry summer, a record July in our part of the US. Our lawn is getting parched. We have a septic tank -- we live too far away from our town's sewer system. On our lawn, there are green rectangles followed by brown rectangles -- this is classic septic tank effect.

I have been watering religiously for the last month or so. Most of the grass has been restored to green color. I set the sprinkler on before I go to sleep. I move it to a different spot first thing in the morning when I wake up.

It looks like every year I have to buy a new sprinkler. I didn't buy one this year. I tried several of the previous years' sprinklers but only with limited success. I have been making do with a sprinkler about 10 years old.

This was also the first weekend I didn't work in a few weeks. I was more relaxed today. My wife and I went to a friend's house this morning to shoot off some homemade rockets.



The above is me getting ready to light the rocket.

I was in a mood to solve all the problems of the world this evening. I looked at my favorite sprinkler from last year that has not been working well. Suddenly it dawned on me what could be wrong. About two minutes and I had that son of a gun working gangbusters.

I should be happy but I am also feeling like an idiot that I had been living with this problem for about a month now.

 

I am fine thanks. Hope things are fine with you.

 

It was a spinning sprinkler with water coming out of two sides. There is an adjustment on each of the two spouts to set the radius of the circle traversed when the sprinkler spins. The two adjustments must be set to the same value for the sprinkler to spin.

One was set to the closest position and the other to the largest. This caused an imbalance and the sprinkler would not spin. It was just watering one spot. It worked fine last year. I can't for the life of me understand how they got out of whack. After I fixed the problem, I tried to cause the problem intentionally. It is not easy to change the setting. So, it couldn't have accidentally happened.

Anyway, this whole thing is a whole lot easier than the above words make it out to be.

Click here to see a picture of the type of sprinkler that I have. The end of the arms are adjusted by screwing in or out.

The one shown in the picture seems to adjust only the type of spray. Mine adjusts the radius of the circle.

This whole thing shows how un-mechanical I am. Give me a paper and a pencil and I will write equations until the end of time.