How to locate sprinkler/drainage pipe in yard?

turn sprinklers on and reduce the pressure so not to get too wet, then go around yard planting little markers at each spray head. the broken or buried ones will have water flow to show where to pull out overgrown grass or dig them up. im betting you are going to need to repair some and maybe add extensions for them any way if you are adding sod

as for the drainage it shouldnt be too hard to follow and a simple rebar from hardware store makes a great probing rod to find the pipes

sounds like you are in for a lot of work so its best to divide it up into stages and dont try to do it all at once

I don’t know how it does, but it does.

If your doing a real “overhaul” your better off abandoning the old system and starting new. You can reuse valves, heads, controller if they still work but pipe is cheap. It’s not going to be worth the headache of tracking down. I’ve been in the industry 25+ years. There is not a dependable way to track the pipes. Just suck it up and install new system. Like most things, they aren’t intended to live forever and that one has likely outlived it’s usefulness.

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L fricken L at the down vote.

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Upvote. If you want to re-use the pipe then you will need to dig up and around your heads and you will see the direction the lateral pipe is going. Follow (dig) that lateral and it will eventually hit the mainline. Do this at the valves too. Once you find the mainline the dig that up following the direction it is going. Like GaDawg said, its much easier to just install new pipe.

How many zones on your controller are being used? You can check to see how many solenoid valves are in the box which will also indicates how many zones you have.