WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS LANGUAGE PROBABLY UNDERSTOOD ONLY BY SPRINKLER GUYS. IN FACT I POSTED THIS MAINLY TO DEMONSTRATE MY NEW METHOD TO CO-WORKERS. YOU’RE WELCOME TO READ ON, BE ADVISED IT MAY BORE YOU TO TEARS.

First buid your manifold. Make sure tees sit outside the box. I cut 1″x12″ sc80 nips in half, which works great. Glue in laterals long enough to extend a few inches outside the box. Flip your box upside down, set the manifold centered, then mark your cuts. Sawzall your notches just deep enough so that a valve’s lower half can be spun out off the threads in the future if needed, and not hit the mole guard. Score the tops of the notches with a razorblade and the notches easily break out.

Next I take a couple of wires and tighten the manifold snug up into the notches. It’s always a good idea to hold on to your multi-strand remnants. They come in handy for many things, like tying up loose tubing. Now you can see the gap under the valves I was talking about- where you have room to spin out the bottom of the valve later without digging up the box.

Now tape the mole guard on. If it’s wet out you could use wires too. Note the handy little holes in the guard, good place to fasten wire. I don’t know why this pic came out so dark. Lame.

Now we’re ready to drop it in the hole. Thanks for digging that out for me, Miguel! Looks like I need to cut back those laterals again a little bit, but all in all I’ve saved a buttload of time this way. Next I insert the multi conductor through the side hole, and use leftover plastic from funny pipe rolls or fittings bags to stuff into those gaps to keep a clean box. When the mainline and laterals are connected and we’ve backfilled, I just snip those support wires and they pull right out.

I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of doing it this way earlier. No more messin’ around.