Handmade 52: #12- Redneck Sprinkler!

"Redneck" Sprinkler

I found this idea on Pinterest!
Original Sprinkler Pin on Pinterest

With Little Man's first birthday (sniff) fast approaching I asked hubby to see if anyone at work had two empty 2-liter soda bottles for us. Why two? Well, I often make mistakes the first time I do things, and I didn't want to risk being without a sprinkler on the big day. It's really hot in Texas in May, and several big kids getting hot and bored at a baby's birthday party would never be a good thing!

I bought a male-to-male brass fitting at the hardware store (about $6 in the plumbing department - if you can't find it then ask someone, I had to ;) ) to attach to the end of the hose...and then I went to town on the empty bottle the with my drill! Weeee!

Several holes, a little bit of wrangling the soda bottle to get it to screw into the brass fitting correctly, hubby daringly climbing the itty bitty tree branch to get it into the right spot, and this is how it worked:

From this shot you can get a rough idea of where I decided to make the holes in the bottle.
Don't stress out and measure, I definitely didn't!

The water pressure was up quite high for this photo.
It made it lovely wide sprinkler, but it was still easy for the kids to get drenched!

The great thing is once you're done playing with it, you can unscrew it from the hose, let it dry, put it away and use it again! But what if it gets trampled on by the children and you can't salvage it? Why, simply recycle it and drill holes in a new one! Don't forget to remove and store the brass fitting before you recycle the bottle.

Our children have accidently broken several really good lawn sprinklers by stepping on them in the middle of their fun, and not even realizing until the spray arm no longer moved. Now I'll save those for the lawn, and use this one when they are playing outside and need to cool down. :)

If you're like us and very seldom buy 2 liter sodas, then don't forget to ask at work / neighbours to see if they  can give you an empty one!

Actually, one of the neighbours saw our sprinkler over the top of our privacy fence and loved the idea so much that he asked us to tell him how to make his own! Isn't that great?!