Commercial Irrigation Repair

Finding the fault, which is most of the job

Irrigation repair is mostly diagnosis. The physical fix is usually quick; working out which of forty heads and eight valves is the problem is not.

The method that works is to run each zone and stand there. A tilted head, a blocked nozzle, a head that does not pop fully, a leaking seal, and a valve that does not close all look identical on a controller screen and completely different when the zone is running.

This is why so many properties have faults that have persisted for years. Nobody has run the zones and watched them, because it takes hours and produces no visible result on the day.

1. Run each zone individually and observe the full cycle
2. Check every head for arc, tilt, and whether it pops fully
3. Look for misting, which indicates excess pressure
4. Check that the zone actually shuts off, which finds failing valves
5. Note locations against a zone map rather than from memory
6. Re-run each repaired zone to confirm before leaving

The failures that account for most of the waste

A small number of faults account for the overwhelming majority of wasted water on commercial properties.

Broken and tilted heads are first. A head clipped by a mower waters the pavement for months, and because the zone still looks like it is running, nobody investigates.

Valves that no longer seat are second and worse, because a leaking valve runs continuously rather than only during a cycle. That is the fault that produces a water bill nobody can explain.

Then lateral line breaks, which are usually visible as a wet area or a sinkhole, and mainline leaks, which run all the time and can be invisible on a slope.

Repairing a system that keeps failing

There is a point at which repairing an old system costs more than replacing sections of it, and properties usually pass that point without noticing.

The signal is repeat visits. A zone that needs a repair every month is not having bad luck. Old polyethylene pipe becomes brittle, fittings fail near each other, and heads of a discontinued type get replaced with whatever is available, producing mismatched precipitation rates within a zone.

Tracking repairs by zone makes this visible. Without that record, twelve separate small repairs never add up to a decision, and the property pays for a replacement in instalments while still having an old system.