How to Drain your Sprinkler System

In the spring and fall, temperatures occasionally fall below freezing and it's important to know how to properly drain your sprinkler system. By knowing how to do this, a homeowner can extend the time of year the sprinkler system is available by watching the forecast and draining the system. When you want to once again water the landscape, you would simply reverse the steps. It's an easy thing to do if you know what to do. It's still important to have your sprinkler system professionally blown out before the temperatures are consistently below freezing.

Follow these steps and keep your lawn greener in the spring and fall. (These steps are for the most common setups and may not be exactly what you see at your house.) :

1. Locate the shut-off valve on line in your basement. You can find it close to the water heater coming off the main copper line that leaves the indoor water meter. The sprinkler system line is going out towards where the outdoor backflow preventer device is located. This line is copper pipe and runs off of the main line. Turn the valve to a closed position. Open the drain that corresponds to it and put a bucket below it. No water will flow out of it at this point but the bucket should be in place.
2. Now go outside to the Backflow preventer, which is a copper device next to the house with two copper pipes and a bell-looking top. You should see two screws that are in an up-and-down (vertical) position. You will need to turn these to a horizontal position using a screwdriver. Water should leak out. If water is flowing with pressure, this means the water was not properly shut-off in the basement.
3. On some sprinkler stems, there will be a drain on the bottom of the pipe just before it leads into the home. Loosen it but don't take it all the way off so it doesn't get lost.
4. You will also see one to several green boxes in the ground next to the backflow preventer. In the one furthest away from the backflow, you will see a drain at the end of a pvc pipe. Open this.
5. Some water (not too much) will be in your bucket in your basement. You have released the pressure and allowed the water from the backflow preventer and the lines above the ground to flow out.