Is your lawn irrigation working for summer?

Donal from The Lawn Doctor

If you have irrigation in your lawn, now is the time to ensue its working properly before the heat of summer arrives with us. Things to do include
1/ Change the battery in the irrigation control box (these need changing annually to ensure they don’t fail in mid irrigation season)
2/ Trim around all your popup sprinklers on your lawn to remove soil and grass hindering the sprinkler going up and down.
3/ If as often happens, some sprinklers don’t appear when turned on, you have to locate them as they are grown in underground. Leave the irrigation on and observe the likely location of the buried sprinkler. Eventually water will wellup to the surface over a general area. Then use a knife or screwdriver to gently probe the most elevated area where you see water welling up until you locate the sprinkler. If you don’t see any water coming to the surface in the area of the lost sprinkler, often if you lie with your ear on the ground you can hear the hiss of water from the hidden sprinkler which can help locate it.
4/Once all your sprinklers come out of the ground, you need to check each one.
A) Is the sprinkler rotating through its required arc (if it is the rotating type)? If not either the internal gears are damaged or gunged up, or the angle adjustment needs resetting.
B) Is the sprinkler throwing water far enough and evenly enough? It should throw water to approximately to the next sprinkler head. If this is not happening it may mean i) the nozzle is partially blocked ii) the nozzle needs adjusting to a different angle, or nozzle needs changing to a different one iii) The water pressure is too low either as a result of street pressure being too low or many sprinklers switched on at one time(or a result of these 2 issues together). The only solution for this is to reduce the number of sprinklers running at one time, or to run your system in the early morning when street pressure is higher as there is little local water requirement at that time.
C) Check through the full rotation of your sprinkler to ensure foliage is not interrupting the water throw, this will need to be monitored throughout the season as foliage is constantly growing.
D) Ensure your popup sprinklers rise up high enough out of the ground so that the grass does not interfere with the flow. Often sprinklers are installed too low initially. However as lawns mature , they create root mass and organic matter which causes the lawn surface to get slightly higher each year effectively leaving the sprinkler head lower. Also if a lawn owner cuts their lawn higher than before, the longer grass can interfere with the water throw.
5/ Set your irrigation control box to the required setting. It is amazing how many people set an irrigation time but then forget to actually activate the automatic watering. Watering times and how often varies lawn to lawn and very much throughout the season depending on heat and wind. As a general rule best time of day to water is just before dawn as it gives it a chance to soak in with minimum evaporation, and also ensures the grass leaf stays dry as long as possible over night as wet leaves are an encourager for grass disease. A lawn owner must however be active in monitoring the irrigation throughout the season to adjust it so that you give enough water but not too much water as its requirements vary due to weather conditions

6/ Do you get dry spots on your lawn in the same place each year? This can be due to a number of reasons
a/ One area has a different soil type requiring more water than the rest of the lawn
b/You have sprinklers that are too small, they can be upgraded to a larger size as long as there is enough water supply
c/ Your sprinkler spacing was designed too far apart initially. This is very common when more than one contractor is quoting for the job and they supply a lower specification which is cheaper to get the contract. The whole system may need reassessing, or you maybe able to install extra sprinklers
d/There are too many stations on one setting on the irrigation controls meaning there is not enough pressure to ensure full water throw. This can be rectified by reducing sprinklers on the one station, or by increasing water pressure (not so easily done)
While many of these jobs can be done yourself, you may need an irrigation company to do the work for you. Bear in mind that they get VERY busy in the warmer periods with often 6 weeks waiting list for service. So its better to call them before the warm season begins