As Maintenance Manager of our mobile home park, one of my many duties is replacing irrigation sprinklers. ["Manager" loosely means that I'm responsible whether I assign someone else or do it myself.]
Last week I bought a bunch of Orbit pop-up sprinklers from Home Depot, since the corporate office provides a Home Depot credit card for our use. My Maintenance Man and I replaced many old sprinkler heads and I just grabbed a bunch of the "nearest to what I wanted," as Home Depot often runs low on parts during the day and often doesn't have exactly what I want.
It ended up I bought both brass and plastic spray heads on the 4 inch pop-up sprinklers. Turn on the water to try them out and sss...snap! off the heads fly. So this is a reminder never to buy the plastic heads with the cut-outs that seem designed to fail on first use. Brass sprayers are the way to go.
Oh, here's another tip. It seems about 10-15% of the sprinkler heads at Home Depot have been previously used and returned to the store and restocked. You can find them full of dirt and bugs sometimes. So many people paw through and mix up the bins that you really have to be careful what you're pulling from the box is what the box is labeled. So, while you are looking that the body is correct and not previously used, you miss something else (and by "you" I mean me). The spray heads are interchangeable. Wouldn't you know it, while the bodies were "half-pattern" the spray heads were different!
So the lesson is, no matter how rushed you are, no matter how long you were searching unsuccessfully for the right parts--and thought you finally found them, and no matter how many dozens of each part you need to buy, carefully inspect each and every one!
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