The lawn sprinkler system is a triumph of the human spirit. Dozens of individual parts, engineered to work in perfect harmony to ensure that lawns are properly hydrated, safe from the dangers of the drought, the sun’s rays and the neighbor’s dog.
In a perfect world, a lawn sprinkler system would never need repair—it would water your lawn, day-in and day-out for as long as you needed it to do so.
Of course, when any time you’re dealing with a sophisticated piece of modern day engineering genius, issues arise that can incapacitate even the best of systems.
That’s the bad news; sprinklers turn on in the midst of a thunderstorm, water pressure wanes, timers fail to function and piping blocks.
The good news is that these issues are fixable. The even better news is that proper maintenance can keep many issues at bay.
Maintenance 101
One of the best ways to prevent your lawn sprinkler system from experiencing problems is to make sure you maintain it.
No, you don’t need to watch your system work every day. (Although no one would blame you if you did. There is something serene about watching a sprinkler system do its job.) You will, however, want to make sure to have your system inspected by a professional twice a year.
The first time is in the spring, just before you fire up the system for the first watering of the year. The spring inspection, commonly referred to as the “Spring Startup,” is an opportunity for your technician to drop by your home and make sure his handiwork is ready to meet your needs for another year.
Your technician will turn on the water, check all of the components for leaks and ensure that the heads are hitting the right spots with water. Winters are long in New Jersey, especially in areas of southern NJ like Camden County and Burlington County, and sometimes pipes freeze and crack. Your technician will make sure this hasn’t happened and (hopefully) give you the thumbs up to water away.
The second time you’ll want to have your sprinkler system inspected is in the fall, just before you shut it down for the winter. This step is called “winterization,” and it’s critical to keeping your system functioning properly for years to come. Essentially, your technician will blow all the water from your pipes, helping ensure that they don’t freeze during the winter.
The spring startup and fall winterization can help you protect your investment—and keep bad things from happening. However, sometimes bad things happen to good lawn sprinkler systems.
What to Do When Bad Things Happen to Good Lawn Sprinkler Systems
It’s a fact of life: Sometimes bad things happen. Sprinkler heads meet the working end of a lawnmower, pipes crack and sensors fail. Sometimes, components simply get old and wear out.
When these things happen, you’ll want to get them repaired as quickly as possible.
Now, in this internet age, when information is readily available at the click of a mouse or a swipe of a smartphone, you might be tempted to try to fix the problems yourself. After all, there’s a plethora of information available on do-it-yourself websites.
The problem, of course, is that good, solid, reliable information can be difficult to come by. Even seemingly trustworthy sites have been known to include erroneous information. One minute you can be watching a fix-it-yourself video on YouTube and the next you’ve got four feet of pipe dug up in your front yard and no idea if you should patch it or replace it.
Don’t do either.
Instead, contact a professional—someone who has dedicated their entire career to lawn sprinkler maintenance.
You’ll save time. You’ll save yourself a lot of physical labor. You’ll save your lawn sprinkler system. And you may even save yourself some money.
Lawn sprinkler systems are a modern marvel, a testament to human ingenuity. They’re also complex systems with dozens of moving parts—each playing a specific role in the ability of the next to properly do its job. If you happen to fix one part but fail to make sure the next is working well, you could be facing even more problems down the road.
A highly trained, highly skilled lawn sprinkler contractor will be able to quickly diagnose the problem and identify other issues that might arise. Was the crack caused by frozen pipes or an over-aggressive root system? Did the rain sensor get old or did it suffer fixable damage at the tiny paws of a squirrel? Is the sprinkler head damaged beyond repair or is the fix as simple as replacing a spring?
These are the questions a technician can ask—and answer. After all, the technicians appreciate and understand the dozens of parts that compose your lawn sprinkler system. And they know how to care for them.
This photo is courtesy of Hunter Industries.