Mid Season Maintenance – OLD

  • Set it and forget it? Sound like you? Either way you can call us in for an hour to check things over or take a look yourself by running a test cycle from the timer.
    Like most things a little bit of attention can go a long way to  help your system run efficiently and reduce wasted water.
  • Some things to watch for:

  • Erosion: Tell tale sign of a broken line or head, or plants blocking spray and water pooling at the base.
  • Sad looking plants: Obvious sign of stress, check moisture level in soil.  Plants can be over watered too!
  • Dry Spots: If you have a spray system you can often have shadowing problems with not enough overlap or head to head coverage.  This does not mean every inch of soil needs to be wet.  Just be aware of the dry spots and if it is stressing plants in that area. If its a concern then its usually a simple matter of an extra head or adjustments and minor relocations of neighbouring sprinklers/emitters can be the solution.  Sometimes just trimming a branch does the job.
  • With drip lines check all emitters are working.  It does not take much to block a micro spray or dripper if some junk gets in the line from a rogue shovel.  After any repair its always a good idea to flush the line/s and then check the zone running once nozzles are replaced.
  • Different seasons bring different weather conditions, therefore different watering requirements.  Keep in touch with your system and adjust the run times for your system based on the water requirement of your landscape or veggie bed.  Most controllers come with a water budget feature which operates the run times on a percentage scale. This simplifies adjusting your program run times through the different growing seasons.
  • If you are away a lot then a rain or weather sensor would be a great investment as they automatically adjust the run times based on the local/onsite weather conditions and prevent watering all together after it has rained. (Amount of rainfall collected before system shuts down can be adjusted in 5mm increments).