Most Sprinkler Systems Need Just A Tune-up
Normal wear and tear on sprinklers can result in dry spots, uneven distribution of water, spray on buildings and cement or water running down the driveway or street. Not to mention spraying cars, or streams of water spraying in the air.
Sprinklers are baked brittle by the sun, worn by years of use, broken by lawn mowers or pushed over by soil movement or roots. They can end up spraying the wrong direction, or distance, or being plugged and not spraying at all. Valves can stop turning on, leak or fail to turn off.
Over the years systems will accumulate many (or many dozen) issues. Since they run at night most of these issues go undetected for a long time. There is usually one big failure that gets the owner’s attention and gets us involved, but often there are a host of other problems that may be resulting in poor performance.
The good news is that almost all the problems with your sprinkler system are easily fixed.
Sprinkler Tune-up Services
A tune-up service is customized to fit the needs of your system. Services may include:
- Timer adjustment or wiring repairs
- Valve repairs
- Pipe leaks and drip irrigation leaks fixed
- Sprinkler head repair
- Sprinkler nozzle adjustment or replacement
Timers and valves rarely have problems, but if they do, we’re ready to handle any issue. Pipes can be broken by roots or soil movement, but we’ll include that in your tune up if needed. Whatever your current system needs, we’ll include in your tune up.
Start With A Free Assessment
Our first step is to come out and have you point out the issues with your system. With those in mind we’ll then run each zone and inspect how it works. We’ll take notes and then walk through what we have found with you.
At the end of the visit we’ll have a recommendation for you to consider. Sometimes there are only a few simple things to fix and we can do them on the spot. If there are more than a few things you want us to address, we’ll schedule a time to return to get the work done.
Tune-up Process
Our tune-up calls for running each zone, adjusting heads and nozzles that aren’t performing well and flagging those that need to be replaced. After turning off the zone we’ll replace nozzles that don’t respond to adjustment or are simply the wrong specification for the location. Then back to the timer to turn that zone on once more for final adjustment, then on to the next zone.
While running through the zones we’ll watch for valves that aren’t working correctly and either adjust or replace any that aren’t. We’ll look for valves that don’t turn on, won’t turn off, spray water when on or leak when off. We’ll also look for zones that don’t have enough pressure to work correctly. Even if low pressure issues have dogged your system for some time, we have a number of tricks that can bring it back to life.
After The Tune-up
When the work is done, and we’ll allow about 30 minutes per zone, we’ll add up the hours and parts cost and provide you with an invoice that can be paid by check, credit card or cash. Many customers have found that the results of a tune up service lasts for years, but for large systems we recommend doing an inspection once a year.