Digging Their Work River City Sprinkler Helps Keep The Community Green And Growing

Jim and Jack Stanton sometimes lie down and relax on a lush, green lawn they’ve helped grow. The green contrasts nicely with the scraped knuckles and blistered fingers they got achieving that result.

Owners of River City Sprinklers, the Stanton brothers appreciate a green lawn more than most people.

They also grapple with the buried rocks and tangled roots that must be moved to make space for a sprinkler system.

Their sprinkler business is one of more than 70 outfits in Spokane County that cater to the lawn and garden community. Started 16 years ago, River City Sprinkler sticks to the basics - installing sprinklers, then keeping them working.

“At the start of good weather, we start hitting seven days a week of work,” said Jack Stanton, 37. Activity for his crew of four levels off through the summer, usually to working Mondays through Fridays.

Come fall, when they service water systems and blow water out of sprinkler lines, the Stantons’ crews have two or three weeks of seven-day schedules.

“That’s OK,” says Jim Stanton, 43. “We have our winters off.”

The past two weeks, River City’s installation work was the typical contrast between basic and bone-breaking.

Two weeks ago, crews worked for five days putting in sprinkler lines for a new Valley ice rink. Because the ground was solid rock, it took crews three days to clear trenches and install the 1-inch polypropylene lines.

“It only took two days to get the lines hooked up and running,” said Jack Stanton.

The next week took them to North Spokane, where a residential yard installation breezed along in a day and half. Stanton said soft ground made all the difference.

“Up here, it’s like cutting through butter,” he said.

Two-thirds of the company work is installation; the rest is maintenance and repair of sprinkler systems.

Jack Stanton is in charge of the work crews and manages most of the repairs for River City Sprinkler. Jim Stanton, who started the company, is business manager and accountant.

Plastic sprinkler heads tend to break more often than the lines. Simple pressure-operated sprinkler heads wear out and usually must be replaced.

In time-operated systems, an extra issue is keeping the magnetic valves functioning correctly. “In those cases, you mostly have to scrape away the dirt that’s keeping the valves from opening and shutting right,” Jack Stanton said.

But lines do go bad sometimes. And sometimes they have help. A job two years ago on the North Side turned into an elaborate hide-and-seek effort by one of River City’s work crews.

A natural-gas repairman digging in a homeowner’s yard apparently sliced one or more sections of the sprinkler system River City had installed.

Stanton found five sections of line buried eight inches deep that had been cut. He replaced them easily enough, then turned on the water.

But the system still wasn’t holding pressure; another cut line somewhere was leaking.

Stanton kept feeding water into the line, waiting for a telltale circle of mushy sod to identify the leak. For five hours he ran water and never found the leak.

“We were using 17 gallons of water a minute, for five hours. That’s a lot of water.”

Stanton then dug out the entire line system and replaced it with new pipe. “I could have done that in 1-1/2 hours if I had just started there. But heck, I thought the other way, digging around, would be easier.”

The Stantons, like most of the area’s sprinkler companies, focus mostly on residential projects. “We get a lot of retirees wanting to stop worrying about watering the lawn,” said Jack Stanton.

Average installation costs about $2,000. Repair jobs vary widely, depending on the work required.

River City does some commercial jobs, mostly in August and September, when residential work subsides.

“I’ve had both a large number of crews and a small number,” said Jim Stanton. “I prefer smaller.

“I have my finger on the work, and I’m sure of the quality.

“And the money, ultimately, isn’t much different,” he added.