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| Here in the desert, during the winter we get freezing down to 1 foot acording to our building dept. Ever since last spring, I have been adding more zones and replaced some pipe in the original zones that were exposed to sun. Never before have any of these original systems froze, so for my additional pipes I made sure to make them slightly lower then the originals. Now it is time to backfill all the trenches. But I wanted to backfill with compost however, my brother tells me that I might have freezing problems if I do that.... My brother is well known for teezing me and giving me a hard time, so Im not sure if this is true or not... IF it is true, then what would you pro's suggest to protect my pipes? I had 2/3s of the original dirt hauled off already... |
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- Posted by gardengal48 PNW zone 8 (My Page) on Sun, Oct 7, 12 at 17:11
| The Irrigation forum may provide you with more expert advice but I'm going to take a stab at it :-) First, I think both the building department and your brother are feeding you a line. I seriously doubt anywhere located in zone 8 the soil ever freezes as deep as a foot. In fact, the freeze depth chart of the USA indicates a band that roughly includes all of zone 8 and above at a frost depth of 0-5". Certainly in my zone 8 we never have any soil freezing to that extent.......maybe a inch or two in the coldest weather but nothing any more significant. And have never worried about irrigation pipes freezing, as long as they are drained of any water before winter sets in. I am willing to give the building department the benefit of the doubt as they will err on the conservative side and that's to be expected. I'll even give your brother a little credit as well - it is the water in the soil that freezes and the more moisture retentive the soil is, the faster it will freeze. And compost tends to be more moisture retentive than regular ol' garden dirt. But I seriously doubt you have anything to worry about. Fill with whatever you have on hand. |
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