Commercial Irrigation System Audits

What an audit is, and what it is not

An audit is not a walk around the property looking for obvious problems. It is running every zone, observing the full cycle, and recording what actually happens.

That includes measuring, not just looking. Catch cups placed across a zone show how evenly water is landing, which is the single most useful number in irrigation and the one almost nobody has.

A zone can be running for twenty minutes and delivering three times as much water to one corner as to another. The dry corner gets more run time, the wet corner gets more water it did not need, and the total is far higher than the planting requires.

of zones run and observed, not sampled

100%of zones run and observed, not sampled

number of properties in most portfolios with a current audit

1number of properties in most portfolios with a current audit

of it visible from the parking lot

0of it visible from the parking lot

What the report should tell you

An audit that produces a verbal summary is worth a fraction of one that produces a document you can act on and budget from.

The report should split findings into two groups, because they behave differently. Broken items, which are costing money every day and should be fixed immediately. And inefficiencies, which cost money slowly and usually need a capital decision.

Each finding needs a location, a description, and an indication of what it is costing. Without the location, nothing gets fixed. Without the cost, nothing gets prioritised.

The report is also the baseline. Whatever you do next, this document is what any future saving gets measured against, and there is no way to reconstruct it later.

How often to audit

A full audit every three years is reasonable on a stable property, with a lighter seasonal check four times a year in between.

The seasonal check is the higher value habit. Running every zone in late winter, early summer, at peak, and in autumn catches breakages before a season of waste and produces the seasonal schedule adjustments that are the biggest single saving available.

Three events should trigger an audit regardless of schedule: a significant unexplained rise in the water bill, any substantial planting change, and a controller replacement. All three change the assumptions the previous programme was built on.