The Little Valves That Could

According to Valvette Systems Corp., LittleValves eliminate overspray, give precision placement of water, high uniformity and reduce misting with just 15' nozzles. Pop-up risers stay up with the water running and with the nozzle removed. Nozzling up and maintenance is easy.

Forty-five years ago when Ted Sirkin started out in the landscaping and sprinkler business he worked with galvanized pipe and fittings. Plastic pipe was about two years away from becoming the standard. Sprinkler heads were brass or metal, and a pop-up lifted about two inches above the ground.

Sprinkler head technology has changed a lot, but nozzles still get clogged, necessitating trips back and forth to the controller or RCV to service dirty heads. Remote control helps, but solenoid valves are slow-acting so they waste water and time during flushing.

New installations are still done the same. Lots of water and time is wasted as the installer goes from head to head to flush out the lines, with water running out of the riser pipes until the last sprinkler head is in place and adjusted.

Spray head efficiency has changed, but not much. There has been some help by installing pressure regulators into pop-up stems. Pop-ups cost more but only regulate the pressure, nothing else. The 5' and 8' radius nozzles are still a problem.

Since the early ’60s, nozzles have come in various radii with a little screw on top to control overspray. Those methods never worked well, so the industry came up with pressure-compensating screens and devices–fine and dandy until the service person goes out to fix or replace a problem head and doesn’t have the proper nozzle or p.c. screen. Further, when the screens or p.c. devices get lost, which happens quite often, gone is the ability to regulate the flow other than whatever size radius nozzle is on the head. So, just like the old days, sprinkler people have to carry around 1/4 circles, 1/2 circles, 3/4 circles, full circles and adjustables. Five different nozzles just for a five-foot radius; then five more each for the other lengths. That’s 25 different nozzles on the truck, plus the two popular specialty nozzles–and the same number for the female type–54 different nozzles and a host of different pressure-compensating screens/devices.

In 1992, The California State Legislature enacted AB 325, which mandated a water efficiency of 62 percent for irrigation systems. Today’s standard radius nozzles provide about 42-46 percent uniform water application, meaning the water must continue running until the least irrigated area gets the required dosage.

The Flushing Cross fits most plastic pop-up heads and makes it easy to retrieve the pop-up riser stem. You can direct the water being flushed to keep it within the planter area, and it keeps dirty water from flowing back into the open pop-up riser.

Overwatering is a serious problem because the landscaped areas don’t jibe with the nozzles or the contractor doesn’t have the right nozzle or apparatus on his truck. Overwatering is slow death to asphalt parking lots and driveways and doesn’t do concrete much good, either. The 5', 8' and 10' nozzles, which generally spray in a low or flat pattern, constantly cause misting because the water exits the orifice in a fine spray. The higher the pressure gets, the more water that is lost. Plus smaller radius nozzles have smaller orifices, hence, clog up much easier.

Late in the afternoon in the fall of 1999, Sirkin was checking the irrigation at a shopping center his company was maintaining and encountered a clogged nozzle located far from the controller and the RCV. He walked back to the controller, shut off the sprinklers and removed the obstruction in the nozzle. “I knew I should flush the head before I put the nozzle back on but, darn it, it was getting dark and cold,” he recalled. Hoping he had cleaned out the head and riser pipe well enough, he put the head and nozzle back on and turned on the clock. Within 10 seconds, the nozzle was clogged again. This time he made the additional trip back to the controller to flush the lines before replacing the nozzle and went back while it was running to make final adjustments.

Sirkin was exasperated, having gone through this scenario time and time again. When he got home, he told his wife he’d figure out a way to solve this problem.

He set his mind to designing the right sprinkler and, in time, filed for a patent.

Three years after starting, then making prototypes and spending lots of time testing and refining the idea while the patent was pending. In May of 2003, the U.S. Patent Office issued Sirkin a patent for a sprinkler head and sprinkler head assembly with a control valve located directly at the head or sprinkler head assembly. The products, known commercially and trademarked as “LittleValves,” incorporate a simple set screw on the side of every product but below the nozzle and filter screen, allowing water shut off at the individual head. The products are available in pop-up riser stem replacements, male and female shrub bodies (shrub adapters), 1/2" and 3/4"riser extenders and 1/2" and 3/4" couplings. Sirkin’s company, Valvette Systems, makes replacement riser stems for the pop-up heads of six different manufacturers.

From the outset, he thought a service person would still have to hold up the pop-up riser stem in some fashion. Not until the second round of prototypes was built did he realize that until the system is turned off, pop-up stems with LittleValves do not go down; they stay up on their own even during flushing. He also noticed that he does not get quite so wet when cleaning or changing out nozzles.

The second plus is that all flow control takes place through the LittleValve. There’s no need to touch the little screw on top of the nozzle (the LittleValve screw is three times the diameter of the little nozzle screw all manufacturers use). Sirkin also realized that vast amounts of water were being saved while servicing clogged heads–one or two cups of water to flush a head instead of gallons.

At his first Irrigation Association show, of which he is now a member, Sirkin met Ed Klaas from Southern Irrigation Co., Atlanta, Georgia. Klaas was intrigued with LittleValves and convinced Sirkin he should test the products at the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University in Fresno, California. Sirkin and his partner and wife, Darlena, went there in December of 2002 for tests on labor and water savings while heading up and nozzling up sprinklers during installation and another set of tests while performing maintenance operations. The Center, of its own volition, ran a third series of tests to determine flow rates due to head loss because of the presence of the LittleValve. The results of all three testing operations showed substantial labor and water savings.

Six or seven months later, Sirkin discovered that 5', 8', 10' and 12' nozzles were no longer necessary when a LittleValve is located under a 15' or 17' nozzle. The spray from a larger nozzle can be brought down to 3' to 4' and stays wherever it is set. With 15' nozzles, there is always a 35-degree trajectory that lifts the water right over nearby ground cover and low-growing bushes. Troublesome flat type spray nozzles could now be eliminated. “If you want the water to go 11 feet, 7 inches, it goes 11 feet, 7 inches,” Sirkin says. He asserts that overspray can now be avoided and should not be acceptable.

Last fall, while installing LittleValve pop-up stems in a 5'6" wide center medium strip in Santa Monica, California, he discovered that using LittleValve parts with only 15' nozzles eliminated the misting that occurs with nozzles under higher than normal pressure or, in most circumstances, with 5' and 8' nozzles. Each time the water went on in the three medium strips, all watered with a single 1" solenoid valve, the existing 5' and 8' nozzles misted a great deal and oversprayed onto the street. In the one medium strip that was changed out to LittleValve stems and then replaced with 15' nozzles, the water now stays in the planter and there is no misting. While demonstrating the products on a very windy day, he turned the radius on two heads equipped with LittleValves and 15' nozzles down to 10'. The water coming out of the other standard 10' nozzles was buffeted, but the two LittleValve–adjusted 15' nozzles deposited their water exactly where it was supposed to. Not long ago, Sirkin installed LittleValve replacement pop-up riser stems at two Los Angeles parks. The products performed well on systems with static pressure of about 125 psi and with pressures as high as 114 psi at the individual head. Even under those conditions, misting was substantially reduced.

The products have just completed testing for precipitation rates. A by-product of precipitation tests is uniformity results. LittleValves increase uniformity of the water application by about 50 percent when a 15' nozzle is reduced, for example, to 10 feet and then compared to a standard 10' nozzle. The tests confirm that by incorporating LittleValves into a sprinkler system, substantial water savings will be realized just on the basis of uniformity alone.

Because LittleValves are basically unaffected by pressures, Sirkin asked that the tests be conducted and the results be published at 30 psi and 55 psi. “We learned that we saved 16 percent of the water normally applied to reach a prescribed ET rate when a 15 foot nozzle is adjusted down to a 12-foot radius at 30 psi, all the way up to saving 47 percent of the water when a 15 foot nozzle is brought down to a 10 foot radius and the pressure is 55 psi,” Sirkin explained. A LittleValve adjusted 10' nozzle at 30 psi saves about 39 percent of the water normally applied. Only at 5' does the LittleValve increase the amount of water used by a standard 5' nozzle. Sirkin contends that the 5' nozzle is so troublesome that all the LittleValves’ benefits over a standard 5' nozzle override this extra water usage. Sirkin points out that the usual misting characteristic of 5' nozzles wastes more water than the LittleValve increase. With LittleValve sprinkler parts or fittings underneath 15' or 17' nozzles, pressure-compensating screens or devices are no longer needed. LittleValves replace expensive pop-up riser stems with built-in pressure regulators that don’t offer any of the LittleValves’ other advantages. In most high-pressure areas, LittleValves also eliminate the need for in-line pressure regulators at the point of connection for the system.

The technology has now been licensed to Champion Irrigation Company. Their new line of ‘Smart’ products came on line in April. In contrast to Valvette Systems Corp., which manufactures only sprinkler parts and fittings, Champion offers complete sprinkler heads with the LittleValve technology in 2", 4", 6" and 12" pop-ups and in shrub bodies for plastic nozzles and for their popular brass nozzles, which will soon be produced without the adjustment screw in the center.