Watering your lawn

A midwest lawn requires 1 inch of water per week during the growing season to stay green. Your irrigation system requires some attention for maximum efficiency and water savings. A leaking sprinkler head or line can cause lower pressure to the remaining heads in that zone.

Irrigation systems are comprised of several components. Below we will discuss those components.

Sprinkler heads are the parts in your lawn that you can see. Over time your sprinkler heads will leak from wear. A rotor head is plastic and as the name says, they rotate to provide adequate coverage. Mix water and dirt to the rotating motion and the plastic eventually wears causing it to leak or the plastic gears to stick. There are some manufactures that have made a stainless steel body which helps for longevity: https://www.hunterindustries.com/irrigation-product/rotors/i-20

The sprinkler head attaches to the polymer irrigation line with a tee. There are several ways installers do this but we will discuss the 2 most common. The insert tee with a swing arm is the most durable while the saddle tee is the fastest and cheapest option for the installer. Compression from a riding lawn mower will cause the saddle tee to weaken and break over time. The insert tee with a swing arm is the best way to avoid compression from lawn equipment. When Sno-Mow Services receives a request for repair of a saddle, we replace broken saddle tees with an insert and swing arm.

Those green boxes on your property contain your valves. Those valves control the watering for certain areas of your property called zones. Your timer turns the zone on for a specified amount of time according set by either you or your irrigation company. The valve is comprised of several components; valve body, diaphragm, bonnet, and solenoid, are the major components. A “stuck on” condition is typically caused by debris as small as a grain of sand not allowing the diaphragm to seat property. When this happens 95% of the time the valve can be cleaned out without any component replacement. Over many years the rubber diaphragm can dry out causing a “stuck on” or a “inoperable” condition; we typically see this with homes in the country using well water.

The timer controls the time each zone waters as mentioned above. Many if not all cities in Minnesota have watering restrictions set up during the summer months to conserve water. Most have a odd/even restriction meaning if your address ends in an even number you can only water on even days of the month. All manufactures have incorporated this feature into your timer. As technology has advanced many manufactures have come out with WiFi timers. Some WiFi timers can be linked into the local weather stations and only water under certain conditions saving you time and money in water. When Sno-Mow Services installs a WiFi timer we use the Hunter Pro-HC: https://www.hunterindustries.com/irrigation-product/controllers/pro-hc

There are several other components to your irrigation system that we won’t go into in depth but they include: main supply line, trunk lines, valve wiring, and atmospheric vacuum breaker. If you have any questions or are in need of repair please feel free to contact us: https://snomowservices.com/contact/