Turning it on is not the same as checking it
Every spring we start systems that have been sitting all winter. Parts fail over time even after a proper blowout, and a system that produces water is not the same as a system that works. So when we open a system we do not just open the valve and walk away. We look for heads watering the sidewalk, gaps where coverage does not overlap, leaks and breaks you cannot see from the house, and controllers nobody has adjusted in four years.
But spring is the worse time to find any of it. In May the ground is damp, temperatures are mild, and a system with real problems will still produce a green lawn. It will look fine right up until the second week of July, at which point it is too late to fix it before the heat does its damage.
August is the opposite. Everything is under load. Every weakness is visible. The problem is that in August nobody is thinking about their sprinklers except to be irritated by them, and by the time they are thinking about them again it is May and the evidence is gone.
What Bozeman's schedule does to a system that was designed for a different era
Under the city's permanent restrictions, sprinkler irrigation is limited to three days a week and is prohibited from 10 a.m. until midnight. That means your entire week of watering has to run between midnight and ten in the morning, three days out of seven.
A lot of systems in this valley were laid out before that was the rule. They were designed on the assumption that you could water a little most days. Now the same volume has to move through the same pipe in a third of the sessions, which means zones running back to back for longer, and that is where hydraulic problems that used to hide start showing up. Zones at the end of the run go soft. Pressure sags across the property at 5 a.m. when half the neighbourhood is also irrigating in the only legal window.
If your controller has not been reprogrammed since the ordinance took effect, there is also a straightforward compliance question worth checking before anything else.
The walk, and what to look for
Do this once, on a watering morning, with a coffee. Run each zone manually and stand in it.
- Mist instead of droplets. Pressure is too high. Fine mist blows away and evaporates before it lands. You are paying municipal water rates to humidify the air.
- Heads that dribble or barely turn. Pressure is too low in that zone, or there is a break upstream, or too many heads are on one valve.
- Dry crescents and arcs. Coverage is meant to overlap head to head so every point gets water from at least two directions. Where a head has sunk, tilted, been clipped by a mower, or been blocked by a shrub that has grown since installation, you get a repeating dry shape.
- Water on hard surfaces. Sidewalks, drives, fences and the road. Common, easy to fix, and pure waste.
- Puddles and soft ground that never dry. Usually a valve that is not fully closing or an underground leak. This one costs the most and shows the least.
- One zone visibly different from its neighbours. Mismatched nozzle types on a single valve is the most common cause and it is invisible unless you look at the heads.
- A controller with a rain sensor nobody has tested. Sensors fail quietly, in the on position, which means they do nothing at all.
Write it down, because you will not remember
This is the practical heart of it. Take a photo of every fault and note which zone it is in. Put it somewhere you will find it in April.
Come next June you will turn the system on, water will come out of the heads, and everything will look acceptable on damp spring ground. You will not remember the dry crescent by the corner of the garage. You will remember it in July, when it is brown again, and you will have lost another season.
Then book the blowout, and book it earlier than feels necessary
Winterization in the Gallatin Valley is not optional and it is not a good place to save money. Water left in a lateral, a valve body or a backflow assembly freezes, expands, and cracks components that are buried. You will not find out in October. You will find out in June, in the form of a wet patch and a repair bill.
Two things worth knowing. First, blowout season compresses into a few weeks and the last available appointments are the ones that get taken in a cold snap, so booking in August or early September is simply a better position than booking in October. Second, a blowout protects a system from freezing. It does not fix anything. If you found problems on your August walk, the repair conversation is a separate one and it is far cheaper to do it while the system is charged and we can see what is happening.
One more thing about the schedule
City guidance is to step watering back toward once a week around Labor Day, so turf hardens off going into winter rather than being pushed to keep growing. If your controller is still running a July program in the third week of September, that is worth changing today, and it costs nothing.
Book an irrigation audit before your blowout, while the system is still charged and the faults are still visible. We record what the property used this season so there is a number to measure against next year.