Winterizing your Sprinkler System.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Winter is here and for landscape professionals work has slowed, but on the other hand the holiday season brings time for family and friends. I digress, winterizing your system is an important part of preparing your home for the winter. Flourish Irrigation is based in Houston so most home/business owners are not worried about pipes and backflow freezing. Houston irrigation companies usually only bury irrigation lines 6 inches below the surface while more north deeper depths are required to exceed the freeze line. It does happen from time to time the last hard freeze in Houston was about 7 years ago. You can bet that people were caught off guard and plenty of pipes and backflow devices burst under the pressure of the expanding water changing phases.

In Houston you do not need to take as many steps as cities to the north due. Most usually lower minutes on their controller to each zone or cut the number of days they water. New controllers have an option to cut minutes by lowering the time percent down from 100%. It works by cutting the time set on the controller i.e. if the controller say 10 minutes and you lower the percent to 30% the system would run 3 minutes. If by chance it does freeze you will hear about it that is for sure!! In Houston, schools out, no work, and cars are sliding all over the road. In this case you need to turn off your system as damage could come to your grass. To turn off your system go to your controller and disable. Do this by turning the knob to off if you have a push button then just push off. There is one more step, now you need turn the water off at the backflow prevention device there is a picture above of a RPZ reduced pressure zone assembly. Usually homes have a PVB pressure vacuum breaker device but both have handles that can be turned to shut off the water to the system beyond that valve. Pictured above the handle to the left is in the off position (perpendicular to the pipe), while the right side is in the on position (parallel to the pipe). If your system has a manual shut off valve in the ground upstream (before) the backflow you should turn it off there as even less of the system will be under constant pressure.

Finally, your backflow should insulated and wrapped with tap. Above is an unprotected backflow the pipe and brass is exposed to the cold air and could fall victim to the cold and burst spilling water from the broken device and cost a pretty penny to fix. Below is the same backflow device, but protected. One major tip is that you should insulate the brass also, most people only wrap the pipe which does not provide adequate protection. REMEMBER WRAP THE BRASS!!!