A good and functioning irrigation system would water your lawn evenly at a good rate that you would prefer, and it would reduce or even remove the requirement of hand watering your lawn yourself, or you hogging around a hose and sprinkler attached manually all around the lawn!
But, if the irrigation system of your lawn is spoilt, damaged and leaking, then it can cause a drastic impact on the lawn’s lush and outlook also. It can cause you to have higher water bills due to the leak, and especially if the leak unfortunately occurs besides the building, then it can even cause structural damage to the building! These are not worth the attention and money and more attention and time has to be put into making sure that your lawn sprinklers are always in good condition.
With that in mind, let us now run through one of the most important skills of keeping up a lawn: how to identify a leaking sprinkler system.
Simple ways to tell if your water sprinkler is leaking
If you have patches in your yard that are always soggy and wet looking, or have a watery feel when you place your foot on them, then that might show up as damage in the irrigation process or drainage of the site. First you have to make sure there are no surface fluid drainage problems. Also make sure to check if these patches are actually lower in terms of height compared to the surrounding, dry areas, and if they are particularly wet after a rainfall, even when you have switched off the irrigation system. If it is not the case, then you should be suspecting a leak in your water sprinkler system somewhere near the wet spots.
Trying to see if there are any physical damages apparent in your lawn
Manually checking on the physical condition of any parts of the irrigation system that you can see in your lawn is worth doing. The sprinkler heads which are exposed and the pipes are more vulnerable to having damage because they are out open in the environment, unprotected. Make sure you take care and look through all places where you have previously seen animals digging holes or eating off, and also any parts of your yard where vehicles, especially large trucks or cars, have run over.
Ensure that the sprinkler nozzles are not blocked or stuck to the ground and this gives you a simple solution of solving the problem if they were in the first place. This is a quick and cost efficient method that you can employ before trying to get someone to pull out the entirety of your sprinkler system.
Another method is to switch on the irrigation system then monitor the movement of water out of the sprinklers. If the pressure of the water is reduced in a particular area or if your sprinkler’s area of coverage does not coincide like it should, then you should be alarmed of a leak or block in the area just above the section of low pressure. Switching the system on and looking at the area where you suspect there is a leak is almost always the only thing you need to do. If you do not think you will recall the precise location of the leak spot later on, and then mark it down with an object or a flag. You can use rocks or sticks to represent this place as well!
If your lawn is dying
If by just glancing at your yard once you feel that a few areas or most of it is lacking water, then the obvious solution is to do something about it. Too much of water, consistently present all the time around the roots of the various plants and grass can kill the tissue cells of the roots. This would cause the grass to be inefficient and unable to pick up the nutrients and vitamins around it in the soil.
It also predisposes the plant or glass to getting fungal infections. Your yard’s grass would begin to be less healthy and lush, it would start to have wilting of the blades and you might see patches of bald areas. Areas of brown or very dry grass may be going worse because they are not receiving enough moisture from the water pressure from that part of the sprinkler system.
Just read the meter!
If the leak is small and the drainage to the soil in the particular area is okay, the early sign of any leak in the sprinkler system might be that your water supply bill has gone up more than usual. This is a good time for you to take a look at the water meter and see if the leak indicator is turned on. Then you should make sure the other areas of your house like the toilets are not affected by the leak, and then zoom into your irrigation system for the problem.
If you need more advice regarding your automatic sprinkler systems and lawn care, feel free to contact us as we have years of expertise and experience dealing with lawn care and all kinds of sprinkler systems.
