Not every project goes as well as planned. We would be happy to spend a few minutes answering your questions.
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We got a call today for a sprinkler repair...a customer was having all kinds of little geysers spray up around his desert landscape when the sprinkler system turned on. Desert landscape will have black poly tubing that supplies water to individual plants through drip emitters. These emitters deliver a specified amount of water to each plant. They are rated at gallons per hour (gph) and most commonly go from 1 gph on up, although you can buy emitters that deliver less or much more.
Drip emitters, and black poly tubing, are not glued together. Rather they are held together with barbs. The fittings and emitters have barbs and as they push into the tubing, they grip the inside of the tube to hole everything together...unless the water pressure is too high.
In this case, whoever installed the drip system didn't install a filter and pressure regulator. The pressure regulator will lower the incoming water pressure down to around 25 psi. Without the pressure regulator, the drip emitters will blow off of the tubing, which was what was happening here. The fix here was to install a filter and a pressure regulator.
Another source of the geysers are pets. Dogs love to chew on the drip lines and emitters. Try to keep the tubing buried by the landscape rock and keep the emitters close to the base of the plant.
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