Buried valves

[DGI]

I added on 8 zones to a condo complex yesterday off of an existing system. All of the valves were 18" deep and buried. We had to dig 5 huge pits. They also used red field wire. (1.5" Weathermatic valves with clocks every few units and they used field wire.) What's up with that? It's only about 3 years old, the system.

The only good thing was that all of the pipe was about that deep, too. I had to run lots of new wire and would've torn up most systems doing that. It was a bid job so I was scared we'd spend a few hours patching it up and running through it. Only hit one line.

[Mdirrigation]

Running single wires is the norm on a commercial system . You may want toconsider on bid jobs to put an exclusion in your contract stating that any unmarked buried private utilities will be repaired at the expense of the customer.

[DGI]

There was no reason to run the single strand field wire. This place wasn't wired with huge clocks. It had 6 9 and 12 station clocks on every other building. No more than a few hundred feet of wire. 18 gauge multistrand would've handled it fine.

As far as the exclusion, won't work in a place like this. The bids are straight forward with the management. Too much competition. More for T&M stuff.