These are organized by symptom rather than by part, because that is how the problem arrives. Nobody rings up about a solenoid; they ring up because one zone is dead, or the bill doubled, or something is spraying the road. Each page below starts from the symptom, says what usually causes it in this metro specifically, and is honest about which ones are worth a shovel and five dollars rather than a call.
One station dead while the rest run. A solenoid, a wire splice or a valve diaphragm — and a ninety-second test at the valve box tells you which before anyone digs.
The timer lights up and nothing waters. A tripped garage GFCI, a stuck rain sensor, seasonal adjust at zero, or a surge-damaged station output.
Water coming up out of the box runs on the pressurized mainline and does not stop when the cycle ends. Where the shutoff is, then what cracked.
A rotated arc, the wrong nozzle, a head pushed out of grade by clay movement, or system pressure high enough to fog the spray into the driveway.
The bang when a zone shuts. High static pressure and fast-closing valves fatigue fittings for months before one of them lets go.
Spitting at start-up is normal. Continuous discharge, a weeping bonnet or a cracked casting are three different problems with three different prices.
The meter test at the curb rules irrigation in or out in five minutes. Then: a weeping valve, a sheared head, a mainline, or a schedule nobody looked at.
The head snapped off and the threaded stub is stuck in the fitting. Extracting it, and why the replacement should be a swing joint rather than rigid pipe.
Wet all the time is mainline; wet only during one zone is a lateral. Locating a break under clay, where water surfaces far from where it escaped.
Watering through a thunderstorm, or never watering at all. Both come from the same three wires and a disc that has stopped doing its job.
Clay takes water at a fraction of an inch an hour and spray applies it at more than an inch. On beds, that gap is what the summer bill is made of.
The March pass that finds what the winter broke, plus catch-can measurement that turns run times from a guess into a number.
The most expensive repair in residential irrigation is a backflow assembly cracked by a hard freeze, and this metro has produced four freeze events in five winters. Six pages: winterizing, wrapping, why nobody blows out systems here, the post-freeze checklist, what to do when one has already split, and what replacement costs.
Pool builds, fence installs and foundation repair all dig in exactly the ground irrigation was put in — and the 811 locate does not mark private sprinkler pipe or low-voltage zone wire. Four pages on what gets cut, who normally pays, and the half-hour before work starts that prevents most of it.
A real table, repair by repair, rather than one wide band.
HOA common areas, retail, offices and multifamily — different scale, different assemblies.
The other word for it, and the vocabulary the regulations actually use.
The metro, zone by zone, ordered by where the irrigation actually is.
Describing what the system is doing is enough — the diagnosis is the irrigator’s job, not yours. Say what happens, and roughly where in the metro the property is.
Call (346) 605-8787 Describe the Problem
Houston