With PVC, Anyone Can Screw Up a Sprinkler System

With the coming of spring, gardens and yards every where are coming alive with the vibrant white of PVC pipe being planted. In straight little rows, with hundreds of colorful flags indicating every place there’s a leak, do-it-yourselfers of every age are sowing fields of sprinkler systems in the hope that their lawn can be as perfect as the non-existent ones on TV.

Few people know it, but PVC was invented by the renowned Swedish physicist, chemist, and glue-sniffer Dr. Olaf Pipe. He initially named this miracle product after himself, but “Olaf” didn’t seem to play well with the foreign markets, so he reluctantly renamed it Pipe.

Due to the secret combination of chemicals used in the makeup of Pipe, it was at first an odd combination of yellow and fuchsia. Olaf loved it but the public was less receptive, so he began looking at other color combinations. A festive neon orange was considered, as was a muted shade of peach, before the good doctor finally listened to the advice of his Danish wife, Uma Fitting-Pipe, and settled on white. The color contributed so much to the eventual popularity of the product that Olaf later named an important accessory after her, selecting the name “Fitting” instead of his original choice of “that thingy with the holes in it that connects the Pipes together”.

Pipe was initially slow to catch on with the general public. Its principal competitor was Water Watch, a plastic pipe that was clear, since many people at the time were quite superstitious and thought it was important that they be able to keep track of what direction their water was going. Dr. Pipe knew that this was just plain silly, and that people would be better off if they could stop watching the water in their pipes and start watching something less important, like political debates.

Two years later, Olaf got his big break. Acronyms were invented in the United States – or “US” as it later became known – and the acronym fad really took off when the government ordered millions of them for use in its offices. Hoping to cash in on the fad, he renamed his Pipe as simply P, but then, during a long evening of inhaling Pipe cement, he remembered that his main marketing focus was the fact that his pipe wasn’t clear.

“Ya, dat’s right! My pipe is da von vit color in it. I’ll call it Pipe Vit Color” – and PVC was born.

PVC is currently manufactured in several sizes, including ½”, 1”, and whatever size you just broke but don’t have. It’s available in two lengths – too short to be useful, and too long to be carried by any car currently on the market. As well as the Pipe, Gustav further honored his wife with the development of 462,000 different Fittings.

PVC has a number of unique characteristics that make it perfect for the do-it-yourselfer. For example, PVC has the ability to change molecular shape to ensure that the one Fitting not in your possession at the time the Pipe breaks is the only Fitting you actually need to make a repair.

Another interesting phenomenon of PVC is that even though it’s plastic, it retains the magnetic ability to attract shovel points. In fact, there are a number of documented cases of PVC water lines actually changing location and moving up to 100 feet underground in order to specifically seek out a shovel point and be shattered by it.

PVC Pipe and Fittings are joined by a special process called solvent welding, which actually means gluing but was renamed so that manufacturers can charge more for the cement. It’s a well known fact that the typical do-it-yourself sprinkler system for a 12-acre yard costs $1.37 for the Pipe and Fittings, and another $6,000 for the cement.

PVC cement - which is named for Olaf and Uma’s little daughter, Betty - comes in a can with a screw-on lid, and the can and lid become inseparably welded to one another immediately after the first use. All over America there are cans of PVC cement that are still 99.87% full, but that can never be reopened without the use of high explosives.

Attached to the lid of the can is a cute little brush that supposedly can be used to apply the cement to the fitting. The brush is designed to hold at least two gallons of cement, because the theory of solvent welding is that you need to coat the end of the pipe, the inside of the fitting, the outside of the fitting, the outside of the can, both hands, one shoe, every tool within a 6-foot radius, and your dog.

Just as Pipe is magnetically able to attract shovel points, PVC cement attracts dirt. In fact, it does this so well that many landscapers now simply open a can of PVC cement, place it in the center of a yard, and allow it to suck in topsoil from other yards up to three miles away. The manufacturers, well aware of the fact that you will be putting the Pipe and Fitting together in a dirt trench using dirt-encrusted hands that are wielding dirt-encrusted tools, have solved this problem by putting a warning on the can that the “Pipe and Fitting must remain clean”.

So, as you watch the lawn green up over the one spot where you didn’t realize you had broken the pipe last summer, tip your hat to the tireless efforts of Dr. Olaf Pipe and his lovely wife Uma, who tried in later years to atone for the misery they had inflicted on do-it-yourselfers by going to invent Astro-Turf.