Bucks Ace Hardware

Bucks Ace Hardware on South Mall Drive stocks tools, hardware, paint and irrigation supplies in St. George. Sprinkler and drip repair is one of the most common reasons anyone walks into a hardware store here, and it is a trade with its own small vocabulary that trips people up at the parts wall.

Context

Threads are the first hurdle. Pipe threads are tapered and seal by wedging - male pipe thread into female pipe thread - while hose thread is straight and seals against a washer, and the two look similar enough to be confused and will not seal against each other. Sealant belongs on pipe threads and is wrapped in the direction the fitting turns so tightening does not unwind it, but it belongs nowhere near a hose connection or a compression fitting, where a rubber washer or a ferrule does the work and tape only holds the parts apart.

The components themselves fail predictably. An irrigation valve is opened not by its solenoid directly but by the solenoid releasing pressure from a chamber above a diaphragm; the diaphragm is rubber, and rubber in a system carrying grit and hard water is the part that eventually perishes or jams open. A valve that will not close is far more often a torn or fouled diaphragm than a dead solenoid, and rebuild kits exist for exactly that reason. Polyethylene drip tubing takes barbed fittings and no glue; rigid PVC takes solvent weld and no threads unless a threaded adapter is used. And in a valley where systems run most of the year, an inline filter ahead of drip emitters prevents more failures than any other single component.

Related on the site: landscaping and lawn care companies and water treatment companies. The directory lists all Hardware Stores.

Nearby: MAX Nutrition, Wayback Burgers, Bedrock Quartz.