Max Operating Pressure on a sprinkler system

[worahm]

To the Forum

I live in a hilly community where the water pressure delicvered tho houses varies from street to street cepending on elevation. I measured the static water pressure to my house from a community well at 82 psi. Recently, there has been severral plumbing failures because of the high water pressure.

I intend to install a pressure reducing valve in the system.

My opions are to install the valve on the output side of the water meter at the curb, the meter is situated underground, in a fiberglass box that quickly fills with sand.

My second option is to install the meter on a 1.5" diameter x 24" long vertical PVC pipe that feeds my Kinetico water solftener that is situated outside. The meter will NOT be buried and there is enough room to use unions so it could be easily replaced

The water softener feeds all the plumbing in he house except for the 9 zone lawn sprinkler system.

Installing a pressure reducing valve that would include the sprinkler system would mean a lof of digging for a 90 year old man.

My concern is that the sprinkler system undergound valves will NOT be able to tolerate the 82psi, (78psi when running) for a reasonalbe amount of time.

Any and all comments are welcom.

Bill

 

[RS]

I would try to install the PRV to lower the pressure for everything, to 55-60 psi, it will extend the life of all plumbing fixtures. Some PRV's have a check valve in them, so you may need to install an expansion tank by your water heater. We pump water out of a lake for our sprinklers, the pump only develops 44 psi, but it will run 12-15 heads at 42 psi, they work well at that pressure.

 

[Twowaxhack]

They run 75 psi at the golf courses around my area.

I wouldn’t do a thing unless I was having failures.

 

[breplum]

82 psi isn’t so bad. Any failure at 82 psi makes me wonder, because we usually set PRVs at 75 all the time and the difference is kinda marginal.
PVC exposed outdoors on your softener would be a higher source of concern.It gets brittle and can crack.
We see really good irrigation contractors put PRVs on irrigation systems so they run at 35 psi…yet I’ve seen (not recommended) lots of dangerous plastic irrigation valves operating in my neighborhood at 135 psi and rarely breaks.
There is no right answer to your dilemma except to say that the code developers chose to require PRVs above 80 psi.