Aaarrrggghhh!
 

On my way home tonight I stopped at the traffic light and pressed for the "walk" light. I was not able to ride the trail directly to the light because the retirement home's sprinkler system was spraying from the boulevard directly across the trail. Irritating. Anyway, I was glad that at least they had the brains to keep the sprinkler head nearest the light stanchion from rotating toward it. So I'm waiting for the light to change and, you guessed it, all of a sudden it pivots and soaks me.

When they say, "Get off my lawn!" they mean it! (I know you weren't on the lawn)

Yes......

It just had to be that way, didn't it?

You can 'gauge' just where the water is falling and where it's not. But more often than not, it seems, it'll throw you a curve ball.

I would go in and complain. Bonus points if you're soaked at the time. Drip on their carpet. If they don't seem inclined to do anything about it, I'd probably say something like "OK, I'll report it to the city that you're in violation of code." There MIGHT be code that sprinklers can't be aimed to hit people on sidewalks. There should be if there isn't and it's plausible enough in any case to maybe get them to do something.

Reminds me of a time I was riding my motorcycle across Wyoming in the blazing heat. I passed a farmer's field where they had an irrigation system running. The outermost sprinkler head was spraying the road.

I rode through the spray and got soaked. It was delightful. Sadly, 10 minutes later I was dry again and back to being insufferably hot.

Let's hope it doesn't rain.

It's summer; I would think that felt good...

Which means what, exactly? I'm in the Twin Cities and ride rain or shine, hot or cold all year. The issue is that this is a private for profit business (brand new, no residents yet) that thinks nothing of setting up their sprinkler system so that the sidewalk/bike path is unuseable when their system is running. I actually did call the city about it. They will be talking to the owners.

To be fair the business probably had no clue the sprinklers were set up that way, at least beforehand. I'm guessing they hired a contractor to construct the building, and the contractor hired a sprinkler company to do the design and installation. The contractor took bids on the sprinkler install and went with the one that came in lowest.The sprinkler company likely designed the system to spray over the sidewalk because it was a lot easier than adding zones/heads/line and would lower their cost for the job.

You might be jumping to conclusions to say that the business itself "thinks nothing of setting up their sprinkler system so that the sidewalk/bike path is unuseable when their system is running." They may very well care. If it's a brand new building they may not even realize the situation.

See what happens once they've been notified. If the problem doesn't get rectified then indeed they might not care. However right now I'm not sure you have enough evidence to prove it either way.

Well your original post complain was "I was not able to ride the trail directly to the light because the retirement home's sprinkler system was spraying from the boulevard directly across the trail." Which means exactly what it means.

Now if you complained that the sprinkler system setup was not considerate then that's different.

If it's raining, generally you have some warning and can take steps. Wearing appropriate clothing, putting the rain cover over your bags, etc. I wouldn't want to stop and spend 2 minutes pulling rain covers out of my bags and put them on to keep my cell phone and papers in my bag from getting wrecked so that I could pass through 100 feet of sidewalk getting sprayed.

I don't think there is a fat cat in a fancy suit with his feet up on the desk lighting cigars with $100 bills and yelling into the phone "I don't care who gets wet, just put those sprinklers where I told you!" More like just a lazy guy working for a landscaping company making $8 an hour to set up the sprinkler.

A lot of times they don't realize their sprinkler is off target. Here in Phoenix most are automated for early in the morning and nobody is around. They might actually appreciate knowing they are wasting their water.

Precisely.

OP here. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since things aren't completely up and running yet, but I ride in around 7:30 am, come back through around 5:30 pm. Hardly "off hours". And it's not that the sprinklers are aimed incorrectly. It's set up in this way. Street | boulevard grass about three feet wide, sprinklers spraying to the right over the | sidewalk | lawn, sprinklers spraying to the left over the sidewalk.

? That's a pretty tortured interpretation of what I wrote in the OP. In the end, however, I don't much care whether we're talking about omission or commission, malice aforethought or inattention. I care about the result.

I'd guess it's more likely a water pressure issue that will be resolved once the facility is fully operational.

If the sprinkler does not have adequate pressure than the stream is impotent; lack of pressure does not cause the sprinkler to aim itself all wonky.

Umm...OK. Didn't realize that getting sprayed with a sprinkler was a reason to leave your sense of humor about the situation behind, but I get ya. This is some Sᴇʀɪᴏᴜs Bᴜsɪɴᴇss™

http://i.imgur.com/qoUavXK.png

No, didn't leave my sense of humor behind, and I'm not the one using bolded caps and the huge pic that you either have readily available for use, which would be sad, or took time to hunt for, which would be more sad. Just pointing out that I disagreed with your posit that everything is ok because no one was malicious and this was likely the result of laziness.

Well forgive me. I, my bike and my stuffs on it would survive 100 ft of sprinkler just fine. I was just assuming others would too but I was wrong.

You really don't know anything about this do you! Not something a beer drinking (or craft beer) expert would be aware of... huh? Line pressure is adjusted inside large facility's.... which won't be completed until everything is up and running. In this case the pressure needs lowered. You must just have "impotent" on your mind.

I know there has been times in my life where I've gotten sprayed by a sprinkler, or detoured around one, but............I don't really recall any one specific instance..........its just not something I ever gave any thought to after the moment was over.

As much as I hate the aphorism, this really is a first world problem.

I was thinking about talking to the city about a set of several high-powered sprinklers that re aimed across the bike path I take at 3:00 AM most days. Unfortunately, these poorly done sprinklers belong to the city. I guess this is their little "eff u" to the remaining people on bikes. They've gotten rid of a fourth of us, so they're on their way to bike-free streets.

At 3:00 AM? A blatant and insidious government plot against cyclists without a doubt..................:50:

Hey, I'm the late-rising cyclist on my street. I head out as my neighbor comes in. It's easy to know when he gets home because he always sings while he rides.

I'm pretty sure they are really easy to adjust the travel. Just set them not to move.

They actually put them on one side of the road to water the other side. I may go fix them some day, but I kind of enjoy them as a monument to what happens when the entire city staff is car-bound while the politicians go on and on about wanting to "go platinum". I wouldn't want to fix them until I had a nice video of someone (it'll probably have to be me) riding through them. As has been mentioned, it's a first-world problem.

Also, I can think of times I would have been happy to get sprayed with a little water while riding.

Perhaps you have no sense of humor? This whole thread is comical. Over 30 posts for a mis-adjusted sprinkler?

Wait until someone yells or honks at you on the bike. We might have to create a new sub-forum to deal with the fallout. Make sure you write your Senator and get him involved. I'm sure Al's got nothing better to do...