A Superintendent's trick

I'm going to share with you on of the oldest tricks in a Superintendent's bag...how to temporarily stop dribbling water in a pipe so a repair coupling can be glued in place. When a PVC pipe is repaired, mot of the time a process of solvent/welding is used. It's a two step process, the first step is to use a solvent to clean both sides of the repair parts that are going to welded together. The solvent, or cleaner as its often called, starts to melt the PVC pipe making it soft.  The last step is to use a molecular binding agent (or glue as it is often called) to fill the space between the two pieces and fuse both pieces of the softened PVC together. This is similar to the way a metal welder fuses two pieces of metal together by first melting the metal and then adding a little bit extra to fill the gap.  Only, with PVC it is done with a chemical and not heat.

The issue with repairing pipe that has water running in it is that if the water gets mixed into the chemical process, the "welding" of the two pieces is severely weakened. So to stop the little bit of dribbling water that may be still in the pipes after the pipe is drained you might need to head to Publix. What you are going to need is a good 'ol loaf of bread. Bread is perfect for this because you can wad it up into a ball and stuff it into the pipe to temporarily stop the water. Once the repair is made and the water is turned back on, the bread will become soft and mushy inside the pipe. The bread will become so soft that it will blow right out of the sprinkler head when turned on.

Now granted that my sprinkler heads on the course have a much larger nozzle than a home situation, but the old bread trick will work in a home application just the same. You might need to take the small yard sprinkler's internal components out so they don't get plugged up, but the bread will blow out of the line just the same.

Some of Chef Todd's bread, I used Rye but any will do.