Spring Sprinkler Start-Up Checklist for Pearland Lawns

Spring start-up is the highest-value fifteen minutes you'll spend on your sprinkler system all year. Do it carelessly and you can flood a yard or destroy a backflow preventer in about four seconds. Do it in the right order and you'll catch every problem winter left behind while it's still cheap.

Here's the sequence we use.

Before you touch the water

Wait out the freeze risk. There's no advantage to starting early. Spring rain usually covers what the lawn needs in March, and a charged system caught by a late freeze is exactly the scenario winterizing was meant to prevent.

Walk the yard first, dry. Look for heads that are visibly cracked, tilted, or buried, valve boxes that are full of water or dirt, and any spot where soil has settled or washed out. Note what you find — you'll want to check those areas again under pressure.

Inspect the backflow preventer closely. This is the component most likely to have been damaged. Look for cracks in the brass or plastic body, a bulging or split section, and any obvious damage around the test cocks. If you see a crack, stop — don't pressurize it. Our freeze damage guide covers what to look for.

Check the controller. Confirm it has power, the clock and date are right, and the program survived winter. Set it to off for now — you want to run zones manually first, not have it fire a schedule while you're standing in the yard.

Turning the water on

This is the step people rush, and it's the one that causes damage.

Open the isolation valve slowly. Very slowly — take the better part of a minute. The pipes are empty and full of air. Opening fast sends a pressure surge slamming into the system, and that water hammer is what cracks fittings and destroys backflow internals.

You should hear water moving and gradually quieting as the system fills. If you hear a bang, close it and investigate.

Open the backflow ball valves slowly, and both of them. A closed valve here is one of the top reasons a system "doesn't work" in spring.

Then stop and listen. With the system charged but no zone running, listen at the backflow and look at the valve boxes. Water running when nothing is on means a leak or a valve that isn't holding. Walk the yard and look for water surfacing.

Run every zone, one at a time

Now go zone by zone in manual mode. Actually walk out and watch each one — the whole point is to see it run.

For each zone, check:

• Every head pops up and retracts when the zone ends.
• Nothing is bubbling at the base of a head, which means a cracked body or riser.
• No geysers — a broken head or a snapped riser will be obvious.
• No soft or sinking ground, which suggests an underground line break.
• Spray patterns are right: no water on concrete, no gaps, proper head-to-head overlap.
• No misting, which means pressure is too high for the nozzles.
• The zone shuts off cleanly and doesn't keep dribbling.

Take notes as you go. It's much easier to fix six things in one pass than to rediscover them one at a time in July.

Clean and adjust

With the problems identified, work through the small stuff:

Clean filters and nozzles. Sediment settles over winter. Pull filter screens at the base of the risers and rinse them — a clogged screen is the most common cause of a weak head after start-up.

Straighten and reset heads. Clay soil movement over winter tilts heads and sinks them below grade. Reset them level with the turf and cut back grass that's grown over the caps.

Re-aim what drifted. Anything spraying concrete gets corrected now — see adjusting spray heads.

Test the rain sensor. A sensor that failed over winter either blocks all watering or lets the system run in a downpour. Most can be tested by manually tripping them and confirming the controller responds. Details in our rain sensor guide.

Set the schedule for spring, not summer

Program for the season you're actually in. Spring lawns need far less than July lawns — often once a week or less with normal rainfall.

Set the controller for spring, plan to revisit as it heats up, and use cycle and soak from the start so water soaks into clay instead of running off. Our Pearland watering schedule has month-by-month starting points.

Keep a startup log

Write down what you find each spring — which heads you replaced, which zone was slow to pressurize, where the soft spot was. It takes two minutes and it turns a yearly guessing game into a record.

The value shows up the following year. A zone that needed attention two springs running is telling you something a single visit can't. It also makes any service call faster and cheaper, because we're not rediscovering history you already know.

The short version

1. Wait until hard freezes are done.
2. Inspect the backflow and heads before pressurizing.
3. Open the isolation valve slowly.
4. Open both backflow valves slowly.
5. Listen for flow with everything off.
6. Run each zone manually and watch it.
7. Clean filters, reset heads, re-aim.
8. Test the rain sensor.
9. Program a spring schedule with cycle and soak.

If step 5 or 6 turns up something you'd rather not chase — a leak you can't locate, a zone that won't run, a cracked backflow — that's what we're here for. A full irrigation maintenance visit covers the whole start-up plus the things a walkthrough misses.

We're local to Pearland, veteran owned, licensed and insured, with free estimates. Call (832) 931-4118 or request a quote online.