I noticed a major leak in one of the sprinkler circuits- an obviously
underground failure which was sending torrents of water through the lawn and
down the street. So I've just dug up the area, and am a bit surprised -
enough to ask for some advice.

It turns out to be a spur running diagonally from everything else in the
system; it had an indentation in the top and a big split along the side. I'd
guess a shovel hit it from the top at some time in the past, and caused it to
eventually fail.

The problem is that, unlike the white PVC everywhere else in the system, this
is a grey schedule 20 pipe. I have the usual homeowner's assortment of
primers and PVC and ABS cements. Does this stuff take anything different?

A second problem is that I normally like to expose four or five feet of pipe
in order to have enough bending room to get the replacement pieces installed.
Let's just say that it's going to be very difficult to do that here due to the
depth and the particular location where it failed. I'm not sure a clamp-over
"splint" will work here, as the pipe is slightly deformed (from the shovel?)
in the failure area, and isn't perfectly round. Are there any techniques for
dealing with this situation? I've never had the guts to mill away the center
barrier in a standard coupling, allowing it to slide over both halves of a
repair, just because the cement grabs so quickly. But if that's my only
recourse, I'll put scads of cement on as a lubricant and hope for the best.

Thanks for any advice.

Art
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