Who isn’t familiar with the Rain Bird 1800 series pop up spray head? It’s a black plastic sprinkler that has a pop up stem with a nozzle on top. While you many not know them by name, you definitely have seen them somewhere at some time. If you haven’t, then you need to get out more. We have thousands upon thousands of these heads spread across all of our properties. It’s been the most commonly used sprinkler over the past 15 years. These were fantastic heads when they first came out. They replaced the old inefficient Champion brass heads that everyone was using at the time.

However; as time went on we began to notice two recurring problems with this product. First, we started to see split seams. Along the side of the 1800 is a seam that would split when there was too much pressure to the head. We’ve replaced many of these sprinklers due to this problem. The second and more serious issue is due to the deteriorating plastic around the stem. There is a white plastic ring around the stem on what is called the cover. It is designed to create a seal so the head will not leak when it pops up. Over time this plastic begins to degrade and eventually the head would leak. If enough heads leaked on a circuit, it would cause a severe pressure loss.

We’ve replaced more of these covers than I would ever care to count. We buy bags of 25 at a time and they never seem to last. While the cover itself is inexpensive. The labor in replacing these is not. We began to notice this problem more than 10 years ago. I spoke to a Rain Bird representative about the problem and he told me that they were aware of it.

Apparently the plastic resin they had used was susceptible to sunlight. He said that they had come up with a new resin that was much more durable and that it was being used in all the new heads. This was approximately 10 years ago! However, even to this day we continue to replace these heads. For many years we all continued to use the Rain Bird heads because there was no real alternative until recently. This contributed to the problem.

During a meeting with a supplier of mine I mentioned these issues to him. He was also aware of the problems and recommended the Hunter Pro-Spray as an alternative. Basically the same sprinkler with a few important changes.

First, no side seam! This eliminates the problems we’ve had with the Rain Bird heads splitting at the seams. Second, the plastic around the stem doesn’t deteriorate with sunlight. We’ve never replaced a Hunter head for this problem. The stem will accept a Rain Bird nozzle so we were able to use our existing stock. It’s a top notch product. If you have a need for a commercial grade pop up spray head, I highly recommend the Hunter Pro-Sprays over the Rain Bird 1800’s.