by Phillip Meeks

Cabin fever is an affliction affecting millions of Americans each year, from children looking forward to the opening of the pool to retirees anticipating their leisurely evening strolls and the initiation of this year’s gardens. By January, the thrill of winter has generally passed: the holidays are over; the first snowman has melted away; skiing and sledding injuries are yet fresh enough to sting. Here is where cabin fever runs rampant and thoughts of Fourth of July cook-outs and green lawns abound.

Before now, maybe your clients thought very little about their irrigation systems. More than likely, many of them are still thinking very little about their systems and will only begin to worry much closer to the thaw. But for you, crunch time begins soon. You’ll have only a given number of days to inspect and repair your customers’ irrigation systems and get them up and running before moisture levels go south. Following are some reminders of the most efficient methods for doing this.

An ounce of prevention
Ideally, you were able to successfully winterize the irrigation system for which you were responsible last fall, draining the lines and blowing out the excess water with a compressor, and inspecting the system for leaks. Bryan Mours, maintenance and irrigation division manager for Bret Achtenhagen’s Seasonal Services in Mukwonago, Wisconsin, also recommends that contractors use fall as a time to lower irrigation heads as well, as they will sometimes rise above ground level in the summer. Mours prefers to lower the irrigation heads in the fall simply because soil moisture tends to be higher in the spring.

The type of system you’re dealing with will certainly have an impact on the ease of your fall and spring duties, so understand the level of maintenance that respective systems will require.

Robert Hubbard, irrigation manager for Custom Lawn & Landscape in Olathe, Kansas, strongly prefers the systems that require compressed air drainage, but says the manual-drain systems will also work in regions where it doesn’t get terribly cold.

Another thing you’ll want to keep in mind for the fall is the adequate marking of heads along driveways and sidewalks, suggests Mours, so that winter plowing services can steer clear of those.

Winter challenges
Even with the most thorough winterization regime, irrigation systems are bound to be exposed to winter risks beyond your control. For instance, a common problem in areas with heavy snowfall is plow damage.

Brian Churchill, field operations manager for The GroundsKeeper in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, reports that because his area saw 75 inches of snow last year, snowplows tended to pile up snow banks, making it difficult to see irrigation heads. Therefore, it was much easier for a snowplow to then inflict damage. The problem is compounded for those contractors who service condominiums or similar complexes, due to the existence of multiple driveways.
The timing of snowstorms, which can influence ground moisture, also impacts plow risks. “If you have an early snowstorm or late snowstorm,” says Churchill, “for instance, if you get something in November or something at the end of March, and the ground’s either not frozen yet or has had a chance to thaw out — then if you hit the lawn areas, you’re more apt to do some kind of irrigation damage.”

Of course, the company with the irrigation account isn’t always the same company who handles the snowplowing, so it can’t be guaranteed that the plow operator will heed the presence of irrigation heads, no matter how well they’re marked.

In those parts of the country prone to nasty winters, the threats to an irrigation system are obvious, but again, a properly winterized system will normally face only minimal freezing risks. “However,” says Mours, “If you get a really hard freeze you always run the risk of heads cracking, and valve boxes or lines shifting. Then you might get a break or a settle that pops on you.” Very little can be done to prevent a situation like this.

Much of the spring repair work necessary for irrigation contractors comes because of other, less professional companies’ winterization faux pas. Seasonal Services picked up a new client last year who had had an irrigation winterization done by another contractor. Apparently, the person blowing out the lines with a compressor failed to inspect the system while this was going on, and the result was two frozen lines during the winter. A dozen heads and approximately 600 feet of line had to be replaced.
According to Churchill, The GroundsKeeper has seen inch-and-one-half PVC mainlines shattered because another company failed to handle the winterization properly. Cracked valves are also quite common in such a case.
Uncontrollable, weather-related challenges and inadequate winterizations performed by fly-by-night irrigation practitioners mean one thing: inevitable springtime irrigation repairs. Hubbard estimates that if Custom Lawn & Landscape serves ten irrigation customers per day during the spring start-up season, two of those will need some kind of repair work.

Preparing for green lawns
As winter moves into spring and your clients begin their dreams of picnics and golf courses, you’ll be responsible for getting those irrigation systems operational before the temperatures climb too high.

Mours begins winter start-ups during the first week in May, and makes sure that customers’ systems are up and running by the second week in May at the latest.

Because of the seasonal characteristics to which Churchill is accustomed, he likes to have everything open by the first of May, so most of his start-ups are scheduled for the month of April. He adds that the timing of his start-ups can also be indirectly influenced by the severity of the winter: “If you’ve had a lot of plow damage, then it’ll take you a while to get through a system, to get it all cleaned up and ready to go. So, our main thing is to get in there early enough and provide them with enough time to get everything inspected, repaired, and then up and running.”

Furthermore, if an above-ground backflow is required, Hubbard says it isn’t necessary to remove these for the winter, as is a relatively common practice, as long as the system is properly winterized.

One factor that’s been left out of the equation so far is the role of the irrigation customer. Most are not willing to maintain their own systems, nor should they be expected to. However, clients should be informed of the basic concepts behind their systems and encouraged to contact you whenever something seems wrong. A minor situation can quickly escalate into a time-consuming and expensive project come the advent of spring, but a consumer armed with a general understanding of his or her system will be your look-out and with one quick phone call may save you both a considerable amount of heartache.

“Irrigation systems are not complicated,” says Hubbard. “It’s not rocket science. Unfortunately, some people make it complicated
. . . my policy is to educate my customers as much as I can.”

Your company may be all that stands between your client’s cold, winter nightmare and dreams of the green, green grass of home. Making an irrigation system ready for spring is a process that begins well before the first snow with proper winterization and consumer education. The next piece of the puzzle involves knowing where to expect problems and being prepared to solve those quickly. If you can accomplish this, you become — in the eyes of your clients, at least — the Harbinger of Spring.

January 2002