I noticed a major leak in one of the sprinkler circuits- an obviously underground failure which was sending torrents of water through the lawn and down the street. So I've just dug up the area, and am a bit surprised - enough to ask for some advice.
It turns out to be a spur running diagonally from everything else in the system; it had an indentation in the top and a big split along the side. I'd guess a shovel hit it from the top at some time in the past, and caused it to eventually fail.
The problem is that, unlike the white PVC everywhere else in the system, this is a grey schedule 20 pipe. I have the usual homeowner's assortment of primers and PVC and ABS cements. Does this stuff take anything different?
A second problem is that I normally like to expose four or five feet of pipe in order to have enough bending room to get the replacement pieces installed. Let's just say that it's going to be very difficult to do that here due to the depth and the particular location where it failed. I'm not sure a clamp-over "splint" will work here, as the pipe is slightly deformed (from the shovel?) in the failure area, and isn't perfectly round. Are there any techniques for dealing with this situation? I've never had the guts to mill away the center barrier in a standard coupling, allowing it to slide over both halves of a repair, just because the cement grabs so quickly. But if that's my only recourse, I'll put scads of cement on as a lubricant and hope for the best.
Thanks for any advice.
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