Irrigation drain valves

Here's a tip for those of you that are getting ready to turn on the sprinklers or irrigation. Turn off the irrigation drain valve! Yeah, who knew. Here's the story. Two days ago I decided to turn on the irrigation for the summer, so I turned on the valve at the curb then went and watched all of the heads to make sure they were ok. A couple needed fixed but that's another story. So I went back inside to do other things. A couple hours later I went down stairs to check the laundry and guess what? That's right a flooded basement. Even worse it seemed to come from the carpeted room. Pretty soon my kids are giving me roving reports of where water is puddling up. I was finally able to track it down to the irrigation control box behind the house. The whole box was flooded and seeping in through the basement foundation. I thought the pipes had developed a leak, but I turned them back off at the curb just to make sure. Needless to say the immediate worry was getting the basement carpet dried. But I called my landlord over to show him and the first thing he asked was about the rear irrigation drain valve. UMMMMMM!!!! I turned the one off in the front!? He grinned and said "No, there's one in the back also" OH. Sure enough I had left the drain valve wide open. That leak I thought we had. It was all my fault, now to tell the wife. So please for irrigation preparation, please check all of your irrigation valves.