Help with winterizing sprkinler system Febco

Hey everyone,

Sorry if this topic has been discussed ad nausea here but I am at a loss. I have a 10 Zone sprinkler system in that I am trying to blow out myself to save some money. I have a setup that looks similar to this:

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but without "C." I swore last year when I paid to have the system blown out, they hooked their compressor up to A. When I do this, all the air just comes out the top of the backflow preventer. I have the bottom blue valve closed along with the main shutoff line. I have the top left blue valve open. I also have all the sprinkler valves closed in hopes to build up about 40PSI in the supply line and then stand at the controller and cycle each valve. I am unable to get any pressure when hooking the compressor to A or B. What am I doing wrong?

TIA,

Derek

Reply to
genius
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Hi, How much do they charge? Here it is 55.00 per visit. But I do myself with my shop compressor. I shut off water, hook up compressor at 60 psi, manually cycle all the zones to purge water. I have only 7 zones, Takes about 15 mins. tops.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

You should have hose bib or similiar after the left valve, so you can connect the air compressor to that bypassing the breaker valve. If air comes out of the breaker valve,try closing the left valve a little while you are blowing air. That will build up enough presuure for the diaphragm in the breaker valve to close, then open the left valve again.

Reply to
Mikepier

Thanks for the help. I had to crank up the compressor pressure a bit and then close both blue valves. I then put air in the A valve at max opening. Once the pressure built up (~65 PSI), the backflow preventer closed and all was good. I do see the real value in a high end air compressor but mine did the job. I could only do one zone and then had to wait 10-15 mins for the compressor to build up again but this saved me $75 and took about 2 hours. I am sure next year will go faster.

Thanks again for all you help...

Reply to
genius

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