The Secret History of Funny Pipe

The garden bed where my compost goes to grow its abundance is watered by a small dripline grid connected to the water pipeline, an irrigational convenience/extravagance that makes it dead easy to water the garden efficiently without soaking the plants themselves, which can lead to mold among other things.

However, the dripline originally lay flush atop the soil, and I wanted to put in more compost and dirt, which meant I needed to raise up the dripline grid to match. But the dripline is permanently attached to a pipe sticking up out of the ground and connected to the water line below. I tried to explain what I wanted to a sprinkler service a few different ways, and I was always met with polite confusion, as if I was asking for something pointless or perhaps even heretical.

I finally got a guy on the phone who understood immediately, saying “Oh so you just want to raise the funny pipe a little bit.” I immediately agreed, caught up in the positive assurance of his response, but I wondered if that was just his little way of identifying the particular connection. A funny lil’ pipe.

But when he sent another guy to do the work, this new guy once more seemed puzzled by what I was asking for, until in desperation I said, “I think I just need a longer … you know, funny pipe?” Instantly the light dawned, he hustled back to his truck for parts and was done in twenty minutes.

Funny pipe is not objectively hilarious, as it’s just a short hose or plastic pipe connecting buried water lines to sprinklers or drips or other surface devices, and it comes in a million boring forms. But now I had this etymological itch to find out where “funny pipe” comes from.

As with most critical myths in our culture, no one really knows. The Toro company, best recognized for commercial sprinklers and manly riding lawnmowers, is the biggest vendor to still call their version funny pipe. One lawn forum contributor claims the name arose when Toro released the pipe in the 1970s, which was then copied by competitor Rain Bird and named “silly pipe,” which somehow resulted in Toro’s version becoming “funny pipe.” Not sure I follow the logic there though. (Rain Bird’s version goes by the more demure swing pipe these days.)

But does Toro call it funny pipe because that’s what everyone calls it, or did they start calling it that? As a company, Toro’s been around since 1914, when they made engines for tractors. They only got into irrigation in 1962, when they bought the delightfully named Moist O’Matic company, which specialized in the then-new field of plastic sprinkler stuff (versus brass and other metal). MO’M’s founder Edwin J. Hunter stuck around to lead Toro’s irrigiation division until no later than 1981, when he left to found Hunter Industries. That would likely put him still at Toro when the alleged funny/silly pipe war went down, so maybe it was his thing?

Hunter Industries is still doing business and still in the family, and their take on funny pipe is apparently considered a premium of the species by installers and enthusiasts, though they don’t consider it funny. So it seems the specific origin of funny pipe will remain apocryphal for now, but at least I can sound cool and knowledgable when talking to the sprinkler guy.