Late Season Tune-Up
Late Season (Dry Spot) Tune-Up
Arguably the best time to tune-up a sprinkler system is not the spring but actually mid to late summer. In spring time, gardens and lawns are usually green and healthy making system weaknesses much harder to spot. In contrast by late summer with almost no rain fall for an entire month, system coverage gaps are very apparent – especially in lawn areas. 
Even coverage or (distribution uniformity) is the key to a greener lawn and reduced water consumption. In an effort to keep grass green people tend to increase run times in an effort to keep the weakest part of the system green. This effectively means people are overwatering a majority of a given area to adequately water the area with the worst distribution uniformity which tends to waste water. This is why we think late summer is actually the best time of the year for fine tuning a sprinkler system.
What is included in a late season tune-up? In contrast to a spring tune-up where we quickly go through the entire system to make sure all the heads are functioning properly we can instead focus more on problem areas. Again problem areas will be obvious this time of year and instead of spending time working on shady or naturally wet areas we can focus on areas that are truly in need of modification.
Re-Nozzling for Better Coverage: Assuming your sprinkler heads were installed with proper spacing, then dry areas in lawns can be easily resolved with simple nozzle replacements. For spray heads, nozzle replacements can be accomplished using a sprinkler remote in under 1 minute. For rotor heads like the Hunter PGP or the Rain Bird 5000, nozzle replacement time is usually about 3-5 minutes and the nozzles are free. We stock a wide variety of both types in all of our trucks. If your system was installed with poor or uneven spacing between sprinkler heads we can identify these weaknesses and create an estimate to add heads to improve coverage. We own a machine that stitches pipe into the ground. This machine greatly reduces the labor needed to install new heads in lawn or shrub areas which can make zone modifications surprisingly affordable – especially in lawn areas.