Tarrant County residents can get a free sprinkler evaluation for their home irrigation system. Here is what to expect.
TLDR: A licensed irrigator will come to your house and walk through each of your zones, highlighting any maintenance or water waste issues, then tell you how many gallons you are using and recommend watering times.
Our irrigators will not offer to sell you any parts or services, nor will they fix or adjust any sprinkler components at the evaluation.
After signing up online, you will receive a call from the sprinkler company to schedule a time for the evaluation. The evaluation will require you to be there with the irrigator the entire time. Make sure you have at least an hour, although it will likely take around 30 minutes, depending on how many zones you have.
A few days before your appointment, you will get a reminder email or text message. If something has changed and you will not be able to accommodate the evaluation at that time, please be sure to cancel ASAP.
At this time, make sure everything is ready for the appointment:
- Your sprinkler system will turn on
- You know where your sprinkler system controller is and it is accessible
- You know where your water meter is and it is accessible
- You are able to turn off other water using features during the appointment
On the day of your appointment, you will get a text message when the evaluator is about 15 minutes from your house.
When the evaluator arrives, lead them to your irrigation controller. They will observe your controller to note the type of controller, number of zones, and current runtimes for each zone.
Next, they will take you to you water meter where they will ask you turn off all other water sources and note the current read.
The irrigator will then turn each zone on one by one and walk each zone with you. They will note any misaligned heads, leaks, or other repairs that need to be made and discuss them with you. If you happen to have a strange set up or inappropriate heads for the zone’s landscape type, this will also be discussed. Each zone will be run and each head checked within each zone.
After all the zones have been inspected, the sprinkler system will be turned off and the irrigator will check the ending meter read. They will then compare the gallons used to the total minutes that the irrigation system ran for to get an average number of gallons per minute for your entire system.
The irrigator will then give you advice on proper run times for each zone based on the type of sprinkler heads and type of vegetation planted there. They will also offer assistance on how to program your controller to those runtimes.
At this time, the irrigator will give you some information to keep and ask if you have any questions. This is your time to ask as many questions as you would like, particularly if you are planning to do any repairs or modifications on your own.
The whole process generally takes around 30 minutes, but all depends on how many zones your system has.
In the next week after your evaluation, the irrigator will send an evaluation report to your email so you can have record of the evaluation results.
Heather Bass is a Water Conservation Specialist at Tarrant Regional Water District who focuses on outdoor water conservation and sustainable landscaping through ecologically sound principles. You can reach Heather at heather.bass@trwd.com or 817-720-4432.
