In Ground Sprinkler System

We moved into a house last fall with an in ground sprinkler system. I have never had one before and don’t know too much about them. What is a general rule of thumb for turning them on for the season? Is is too early to do now? We are in Rogers.

Thanks!

My guy doesn’t turn my mine on until after Memorial Day. Last thing you want is for it to freeze. You should be safe now but it’s better IMO to let the ground warm some more.

I’d wait until the lawn actually needs it, or at least until it is certain we won’t get any cold snaps. The bonus of waiting until your lawn actually needs it is you will be saving yourself money. Some years are wet enough that watering is not needed at all so you’ll be saving on your water bill and you won’t be paying someone to blow out the lines at the end of the year.

I would contact the the installers, the name is usually on the control and introduce yourself.
Also ask your neighbors, heavy soils less water, sandy soils more water.
Munchy has good advice

Make sure you look into the Cities watering policy before you start irrigating!

Freezing concerns vary between PVC and poly pipe systems. Knowing what you have would be nice to know. My poly pipe system has never froze, even when I didn’t blow it out for the winter. Well, maybe froze but never burst a pipe.

SuperDave1959 wrote:

Freezing concerns vary between PVC and poly pipe systems. Knowing what you have would be nice to know. My poly pipe system has never froze, even when I didn’t blow it out for the winter. Well, maybe froze but never burst a pipe.

The biggest issues come from water still in the heads as well as if the controller is outside unprotected, they tend to break when frozen with water inside.

Best to go through everything before you need it. The ground is plenty warm to keep the heads from freezing. A blanket over the backflow in sub freezing weather will be sufficient.

We’ve been starting up systems for the last 3 weeks. It will take several hours of sub 30* temps to do any damage. Not saying it’s not possible, but I think the metro has cleared that hurdle.

Agree with above on hiring a pro for the first year. There are some tips and tricks that a technician can pass on if you ask them.

Normally wouldn’t be in a hurry, but since it’s new to you I would fire it up now to make sure everything is good before you need to use it and the places are all busy.

LOL 3 weeks ago they start turning on sprinklers in crosslake, so I think your fine.

i fired mine up last weekend, just to be sure everything was working fine and no leaks. The i just shut the control unit off until the wet spring weather dries up.

Do yourself a favor if it’s your first season and your hiring out the blowout schedule something way ahead of time. The switch flips and everyone is calling the places at the same time.

Not to be negative (always followed by something negative)but after moving from town with a system to out in the country without I’ll take my crappy grass and not messing with sprinklers.

slipbob_nick wrote:

Do yourself a favor if it’s your first season and your hiring out the blowout schedule something way ahead of time. The switch flips and everyone is calling the places at the same time.

This is good advise as well. I live a bit more south than most of you, so our system has been on for a while now, but check with some of the local providers to see if they have a “turn on/turn off” deal. Our company will come out and start up our system and do the backflow preventer testing (required by our County) and then come back in the fall to do the winterization service as well. It costs us 15% less than doing the two separately, plus they give us a 10% discount on any parts that need to be replaced.

Do any of you irrigate off of secondary water? We have house water and yard water on separate systems. Because of the drought we had the last couple of years, the irrigation district was pumping a lot of mud. This Spring my head filters were packed with mud. I cleaned them all and now getting an extra 5′ out of the sprinkler coverage areas.

Thanks everyone for the advice! My intent was to start it up early so I could learn how it works and get out the bugs, if any. I did find out our neighbor is the one who did the blowout. I’m going to ask if he can go through the start up with me.