If water is running out of the assembly right now, skip everything else on this page and close the irrigation isolation valve — the handle at or below the assembly itself. That pipe is on the pressurized mainline and it will keep running, at street pressure, until somebody shuts it. Everything after that can be done at a normal pace.
At or just below the assembly. Quarter-turn handle: in line with the pipe is open, across it is closed. This is the correct shutoff because the house keeps its water.
If the handle will not turn — and after a freeze, seized handles are common — the main shutoff for the property is the fallback. Cold shower, no flooded yard.
The split, the assembly, the wrap or absence of one, the date on your phone. If there is any prospect of a utility leak adjustment or an insurance conversation, that photograph is the cheapest thing you will do all week.
If the casting is sound and what failed is internal — a poppet, a check disc, a seal, a spring — a rebuild kit puts it right for a small fraction of a replacement. This is the better outcome and it is more common than people expect, because a wrapped-but-not-drained assembly often loses its internals before its body.
A visible split, crack or bulge in the body or the bonnet. Brass and bronze do not get repaired in place — there is no field fix for a cracked casting, and anything offered as one is a temporary measure on a component whose whole purpose is protecting a drinking water supply. A cracked body means a new assembly.
One useful diagnostic in the middle: a system that holds no pressure at all, with no visible crack, sometimes has a split on the underside or on the inlet pipe below the assembly rather than in the assembly itself. That is a cheaper repair, and it is worth having looked at rather than assumed.
This is the part that surprises people and it is worth planning around. A hard freeze does not damage one assembly, it damages a large share of every unprotected assembly across the whole region on the same night. Within forty-eight hours, every irrigation contractor in the metro has a full book, and supply houses run short of the common residential sizes because they stock for ordinary attrition rather than for a simultaneous metro-wide event.
Two practical consequences. First, an urgent-feeling call in the week after a freeze may genuinely be a two- or three-week wait, and a contractor who tells you that honestly is more reliable than one who promises tomorrow. Second, and more usefully: with the isolation valve closed, there is no ongoing cost to waiting. The lawn does not need irrigating in January. Nothing is getting worse. The only thing a rushed booking buys is a worse price at a worse time.
The one thing worth doing immediately is getting on a list, because the list is the constraint rather than the part.
Usually not, and it is worth knowing why rather than finding out on the phone. Damage to the irrigation equipment itself is typically excluded or falls under a deductible larger than the repair. Where a claim sometimes does exist is when water from the failed assembly damaged something else — a garage, a wall, a neighbouring structure. That is a conversation with the carrier rather than with an irrigator, and photographs on the day are what make it possible at all.
No. Backflow prevention on an irrigation system connected to a potable supply is required, not optional, and it is the one part of the system that exists to protect people other than the property owner. A system left running with the assembly removed is a cross-connection, and it is exactly the scenario the requirement was written against.
Occasionally. If the property has repeatedly lost assemblies to freezes, the more useful upgrade is usually where and how it is mounted — a more sheltered position, or a permanent insulated enclosure — rather than a different class of assembly. Moving up to a higher-protection type is driven by what the system does, not by durability.
Almost always that it was wrapped while still full and still pressurized. Insulation slows heat loss but does not add heat, so a full assembly wrapped through a long event eventually reaches ambient temperature with water inside it. Draining it before wrapping is the step that makes the difference, and it is the one most commonly skipped.
Parts, labour, assembly type and testing, broken out.
The rest of the after-a-freeze check, beyond the obvious split.
The ten minutes that stops this happening again.
If it ran for a while before anyone noticed.
Once the isolation valve is closed there is no clock. Say whether the casting is visibly cracked and roughly where in the metro the property sits — that is what decides rebuild against replacement.
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