Fall Is Here, And There’s Plenty of Home Maintenance To Do, No Matter the Temperature
It’s officially fall in North Texas, and if you’re like me, your Halloween decorations have been up since Labor Day and pumpkin-everything has long since been broken out.
It’s a particularly exciting year because the first weekend of fall will see highs in the 80s. I may just bust out a sweater! Anywho, the changing of the seasons always means that certain home maintenance tasks need doing, and one that should come to the top of the list at the end of the summer is making sure your sprinkler system is in good working order.
Here’s a primer on testing your sprinkler system, along with a few things that can go wrong that you should watch out for while you’re testing!
Test the Zones and Flip the Switch
One of the first things people neglect to do is label the zones on their control panel. This only takes a few minutes and makes things so much simpler later when you want to check your zones. So if it’s not done, do it! Next, if you haven’t made use of your rain sensor, flip that switch. You don’t want to be the guy in the neighborhood with his sprinklers running during a storm.
Once your zones are labeled, you can test each one. First, walk around your yard to look for broken heads. These are extremely common, but you can easily replace them yourself. Also, look inside the control valve covers in the yard to see if there is water accumulating in them.
Run each zone for at least two minutes. Make sure each sprinkler head is spraying only grass or vegetation. Spraying the house or fence not only wastes water but can damage exterior material.
Check For Leaks and Misplaced Heads
To check for leaks or water line breaks, look for any areas not getting coverage. If you see an empty spot or water bubbling up or forming on the sidewalk, you may have a break in the underground line.
A lot of systems have underground soaker lines. One of the reasons to run the system for at least two minutes is to see if you’re getting more water in one area than another.
Look for low water pressure on heads or a change of pressure between them (one spraying hard and fast like the geyser in the video and another just trickling). Make sure rotating heads are actually rotating, especially if they’ve been dormant for a few months.
After running the sprinklers, check for soil erosion and sinkholes, other signs of an underground broken line.
If you find any problems, they’re usually relatively easy to fix (unlike the patio problem above, yikes). You can find a YouTube video and get parts at your local hardware store. The only issue is that it can be a pain in the butt to dig and find the lines. If you’re not into DIY, call a sprinkler irrigation company.
As we get into actual fall temperatures sometime this winter and you’re not watering as much, you’ll want to repeat this process before going into protective mode in anticipation of freezing temperatures — assuming we don’t go straight from 80 to freezing, which we all know can happen here.
In any case, this is one of those maintenance tasks you should try to do whenever the seasons change.
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