Learn Something today! Every Homeowner should know how this works!

hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another fun day here on the stoney ridge farm today is going to be a quick tip stoney ridge video and we're going to teach you guys a little bit about how a frost-free hydrant works now i've got my buddy brian he flew in here from seattle all the way to north carolina brian thanks so much for joining us here absolutely brian is a plumber you've been a plumber for how many years about 23. uh 23 years plumbing experience are you a journeyman plumber i am okay awesome so what we're gonna do today is we're going to walk you through we've got an awesome cutaway here from woodford wood woodford for brass woodford brass okay this is our iowa edition okay awesome so we're going to walk you around this and we're going to show you exactly how a frost-free hydrant works and maybe you've seen one of these out in your yard maybe you've seen one at a friend's house maybe you have one maybe you have seen them at work an industrial application or something like that so we're going to walk you through and show you exactly how this works and how it keeps from freezing even in sub zero temperatures so come along let's have a fun stoney ridge quick tips video with brian that fix it guy from youtube and i'll post a link to his youtube channel he does awesome plumbing videos guys you'll really love it and you'll gain some knowledge from this fella all right [Music] before we get started here we've got a couple of these laid out on the table we're going to take you guys over and show you the ones that we have laid out on the table this particular model is almost an industrial application wouldn't you say yeah it's a little more complex it's great it's awesome it's got variable flow which is something that a lot of these don't have i mean you're gonna gain that variable flow by how far up you put this yeah but this actually will allow you this little cam and clovis mechanism right here is actually going to allow you to only do this partially so it's pretty cool nice it's a good little design we'll slide this guy out of the way and we're going to show you guys actually we'll stay right here we've got two other models right here and this model is what you would find in like your local uh homeowner store home home improvement store so i think this might have been purchased at lowe's home improvement that's where we shop most of the time here local north carolina store company this has a lot less features on it is that correct it does i mean it doesn't have that variable difference the the linkage here is a little bit different it doesn't actually work quite the same way and then you can also feel that when this comes down it's got that snap to it yeah but it doesn't quite have it the way the other one does and that just means the plunger you know with that snap you're getting the full force and everything shutting off awesome and it has a spot for a lock right here so which that's a great feature yeah awesome very cool we've got another one so we pulled this out of the yard this is four feet deep and the way this works guys is that there is the hydrant portion up here at the top and then down here this portion is a tube where the water will flow now when you shut this off the water flows back down through here let's grab the other one that we pulled out of the ground just a few seconds ago so this is one that i'm going to install down at my garden and again this is another woodford brass unit same exactly as the one that we have right here the cutaway and we'll show you how all this stuff functions in the cutaway same thing this will be buried up in the soil down to your frost line and this is a four footer right here so it's really really long our frost line here is about 18 inches typically we'll bury something like this up to about 20 inches but whatever floats your boat so depending on where you live if you live up in wyoming or if you live way up north somewhere new hampshire or something like that you may have a five or a six footer is that right so this will be buried and when you shut the water off the water falls back down through here and goes through a weep hole and we'll show you that weep hole in the cutaway and we'll show you how all this works it's really really simple and really pretty cool setup it is they're awesome what we have here today is a woodford brass yard hydrant this actually is a variable flow yard hydrant as you can see it says right there on it and let's just start with the spout okay this spout it actually has a garden hose fitting to it that you can take off and you could hard pipe it if you really wanted to or if this got nicked or banged up it's a quick replacement that very nice feature we go here to the variable flow feature which is this adjustment lever right here and you can minimize how high you open this okay so it's nice say your kids are wanting to play in the water well maybe you don't want it full bore maybe you're watering your chickens or you're doing a drip line to your garden this could work for that really easy it would be very nice so here we go to the way to adjust the linkage these particular movements right here can be adjusted by these set screws and removing this nut this can actually be twisted up this right here can be up or down if the linkage is off we'll talk about that at some other point i will be making a video and explaining a lot more about this stuff next we're going to go to the packing nut this packing nut right here is can be easily adjusted if water is coming out of here and this is the packing this is a graphite packing that will allow it will compress whenever you tighten this down and it will allow water to stop we go here to a solid brass body as we start out and this right here is actually going to connect down over to here to a galvanized shaft inside the outside of this is also galvanized and it's going to be really long like josh just showed you a couple minutes ago so then we get down here to this bronze valve body this is going to be in the ground this is going to have a plunger in it and it's going to have a weep hole on it what we're looking at with this plunger this is a lot of rubber this can easily be replaced by removing the head at some point if you needed to but what we're looking at is when the flow stops water will come out from the top and it'll come out this weep hole and now when we open this up you can see there is a little bit of a gap down there and there also is this piece of the valve body right here what water is going to go around that it's going to go up in here and it's going to come out here now what you're looking for in a good yard hydrant when this shuts and clicks is the snap right up here on this so when you open that full blast and you come down you're gonna feel some tension there's about three inches between here which is what you want and you wanna hear that little clank at the end that's the snap that's what's going to allow this to actually just close and seal off now water falls out of this falls back down the pipe correct yes and then this is buried in the ground below the frost line so therefore correct it is buried in the and then water is going to come out we're going to have a leech field with maybe about half inch rock and you want to go i like to go about a foot below this valve as well that way when all this water does come out it has some place to go and disperse especially if you're using it multiple times right you're going to have some ground saturation if you had this filled in you're going to have problems awesome so the down and dirty is water comes up through here when we open the valve is that correct yep okay and then water comes out right through here to your water hose okay when we shut it off go ahead and shut it off shut it off that drives this shaft all the way down through here and drives this guy all the way down and then the water falls out of this pipe and thus keeps everything below the frost line and you don't have a frozen hydrant hence frost free well folks that's how a frost free hydrant works first free yard hydrant i want to thank you so much brian good i appreciate it my pleasure we've been fighting the wind all week long so we've got a couple videos that we shot already but we have to voice over them because the wind is blowing so hard out here guys thanks so much excuse the messy shop guys check out brian's channel that fix it guy also big shout out to the folks at psi what a super awesome thing yeah for making this awesome cutaway it's not every day we can explain something with an awesome cutaway like this so thanks brian thanks to you guys hope you learned something today share this with like-minded people please pound that like button jump in subscribe the channel and ring that little bell so you can get notified when we post a new video on the stony ridge all right thanks brian yeah thank you dang it i did it again we had a good time guys [Music] just don't want it to weep right on i don't understand who are you doing the video for i keep pointing at the camera look at the camera look at the camera look at the camera where's the camera repetition is the mother of the memory it indeed it is and as we start this whole process over brian will get better and better you see the thing here's the thing i'm always used to looking at the camera and not having somebody with me so having josh you naturally just want to look to the person that you're talking to and i kind of space that i'm actually talking to youtube this is not as easy as it looks is it no no it's not great you don't have much battery life okay oh let's snuggle up