Yard work: sprinkler maintenance

Self-tutoring about yard work: the tutor mentions sprinkler maintenance.

When I was a kid in the Maritimes, not everyone used a sprinkler. The first kind I recall seeing was the oscillating type; we had one. Those seemed to work, summer after summer, without any problems. Then again, it was the 70s.

(Note: I can’t recall seeing automatic, in-ground irrigation until I arrived on the west coast, back in ’86. Some institutions had it.)

I’ve gone through several oscillating sprinklers; last time one quit on me, I bought a different kind of sprinkler. It’s what one might call the “menu” kind, with six different patterns of irrigation to choose from. In fact, I’ve got two of those, different variations. They’re mainly what I use nowadays to water the lawn. I can’t recall when I bought either one.

Recently I noticed that one of them didn’t water equally left and right on a pattern where left and right irrigation should be equal. “Seriously?” I thought. “What now?” Sprinkler maintenance, something I never seemed to witness back in the 70s, seems to have become, as they say, “a thing.”

Before the next watering, I examined the sprinkler and found perhaps some debris around the outlet of the problematic pattern. I got a slot screwdriver and scraped around, removing said debris. After that, when I retried the sprinkler, on that irrigation pattern, left and right seemed to once again be watering equally.