Irrigation in Richmond & Williamsburg, VA

Spring startup usually lands somewhere in March or April, once the threat of a hard freeze has passed and the lawn is waking up. Winterization needs to happen before the first hard freeze, which in this part of Virginia typically means sometime in November. Both dates move a bit year to year with the weather, and on a maintenance plan we schedule them for you rather than leaving it to you to watch the forecast.

Water left sitting in the lines, heads, and backflow device expands when it freezes, and that pressure cracks components. The backflow preventer is usually the expensive casualty, and cracked lateral lines mean digging to find the break in spring. A winterization visit blows the water out of the system so there’s nothing left to freeze. It’s one of the cheaper visits of the year and it prevents one of the more annoying repairs.

Less often than most people think, and deeper each time. Frequent light watering trains roots to stay near the surface, which leaves the lawn helpless in a July dry spell. Longer, less frequent cycles push roots down. Early morning is the window to aim for, since watering in the evening leaves grass wet overnight in our humidity and invites disease. Over clay, breaking a long run into shorter cycles with soak time between them keeps water from sheeting off instead of soaking in. We set your controller around your soil, your zones, and the season.

Usually coverage rather than volume. Heads drift out of alignment, get blocked by grown-in plants, or clog and stop throwing their full pattern, which leaves gaps between zones where nothing lands. Sometimes a zone valve has failed and that section isn’t running at all. Sometimes the run time is fine for turf but wrong for beds sharing the same zone. We run the system zone by zone, watch where water is actually landing, and correct the heads, the timing, or both.

Both. Startup, winterization, and repairs on existing systems are part of what our maintenance clients add to their plans. We also install irrigation on properties that don’t have it, and it’s worth planning when we’re already putting in sod, seeding, or new beds, since establishing new turf and plantings takes consistent water in the first season. If you’re weighing whether your property needs a system at all, that’s a good conversation for the site visit.