Leaky Swing Joints
I just finished making all of the connections in a pretty large sprinkler project (55 rotors and ~2,300 feet of pipe) at my house. Everything seems to be working pretty much how I had planned EXCEPT there is one little annoyance that is driving me crazy. I am getting VERY consistant leaking at almost all of my swing joints. These leaks are mostly a constant drip about every second and do not materially impact the sprinkler performance. The leaks mainly happen at the threads where the ell is connected to the reducer tee and where two ells are connected together at the top of the swing joint assembly just before the sprinkler head. The funny pipe connections are generally not leaking. I did not use any thread tape per my dealers recommendations and I have experimented with different amounts of tightness of the connections but nothing has helped. The water pressure should be between 50 to 60 psi at the sprinkler heads so it shouldn't be that either. Right now I would say about 80-90 percent of the joints are leaking. Is there anything I can do to get rid of these leaks? Is it at all acceptable to have small leaks such as these in a sprinkler system? Should I apply a small amount of pipe tape to the threads in the swing joints? I am going crazy here trying to fix this! I am really anxious to get this finished up so hopefully someone will have some good ideas for me. Thanks in advance!
Matt
