How Do I Maintain My Sprinkler System?

Here is the money problem, Patriot Nation: the sprinkler system that waters the street, the driveway, and the cracked head at the corner is not watering your lawn, it is watering a leak and paying SAWS for the privilege. A system that is ignored costs money three ways at once: the wasted water, the higher bill, and the buried leak that becomes a big repair in the spring. Ten minutes a month fixes all three.

Why sprinkler maintenance saves you money

An irrigation system only saves you effort if it actually waters the lawn and not the street. Once a month, run each zone for a few minutes and walk the yard: look for heads that are tilted, clogged, or overshooting onto pavement, and watch for wet spots or soggy areas that signal a leak in the line. A quick fix keeps the system healthy and keeps the water bill honest.

The real-world consequence is that the cheap fix is the one you catch early. A tilted head wastes water for a month before you notice, a clogged head lets a patch of lawn die, and a buried leak can run for a whole season before the bill or the sinkhole gives it away. The monthly walk is the cheapest insurance the system has.

What the term actually means: coverage, efficiency, and the watering rules

The term: irrigation coverage, the pattern each head throws onto the lawn, and efficiency, how much of that water lands on the grass instead of the pavement.

What it means: heads that overlap too little leave brown spots, heads that overshoot water the street, and heads that are blocked water nothing. San Antonio also has its own rules: SAWS sets designated watering days by the last digit of your street address, with the allowed hours and how often you can run the system set by the current drought stage. ^[1] San Antonio Water System.

The money and the real-world consequence: follow the rules and the schedule is legal and cheap. Ignore them and the fine, the waste, and the dead grass all arrive at once.

The monthly walk: the ten minutes that save the season

Once a month, run each zone for a few minutes and walk it: check that every head pops up and sprays, re-aim anything that is overshooting onto the driveway or sidewalk, and clear heads that are buried in grass or clogged with dirt. Look for soggy areas, gushing heads, or zones that never pressurize, which usually means a leak or a stuck valve.

The payoff is simple: a system that runs clean and even uses less water, keeps the lawn uniform, and fails on your schedule, not on a hot July afternoon when the whole zone is dead and the bill is a surprise.

Seasonal scheduling and the SAWS rules

Water deeply and less often: two or three sessions a week are usually enough for a Hill Country lawn, and the schedule should change with the seasons, running longer but less often in summer and almost not at all in winter. SAWS sets watering days and times for San Antonio, so program the controller to match the current rules. ^[2] San Antonio Water System.

The real-world trick is to set the controller once per season, not to touch it every week. A smart controller can adjust itself to rainfall and the current drought stage, which keeps the lawn healthy and the watering legal without you thinking about it.

Winterize before the freeze

Before the first hard freeze, drain the system through manual drains or have it blown out with compressed air. Water left in buried lines freezes, expands, and cracks pipes and heads, and the repair bill arrives in spring when you turn the system back on.

San Antonio gets its hard freezes in December and January, and the houses that skip winterization are the ones paying a plumber in February. Put the drain-down on the calendar with the first freeze warning, and the system wakes up in March ready to run.

Common repairs you can catch early

Replacing a broken head, tightening a valve, and re-aiming a misaligned nozzle are cheap, do-it-yourself fixes. The expensive failure is the buried leak you never see, which is exactly why the monthly walk is worth the ten minutes.

The real-world rule I give homeowners is to fix what you can see the month you see it. A cracked head that sprays sideways is a $10 part and five minutes. The same head left alone wastes hundreds of gallons before the season is over, and the wet spot it hides is the one that costs a real repair.

Patrick's advice: make it a great one

Water deeply and less often, two or three sessions a week, and shift the schedule with the seasons: longer but less often in summer, almost nothing in winter. Run each zone monthly and fix what you see, winterize before the freeze, and follow the SAWS watering days for your address. Do that, and the system stays cheap, legal, and green, and the water stays in the lawn where it belongs, Patriot Nation. Make it a great one. Ask Patrick to help you plan your sprinkler maintenance.

Frequently asked questions about sprinkler maintenance

These are the questions homeowners ask me most about irrigation systems, answered plainly.