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Winterization

First and foremost, turn off the water to the irrigation system from the meter or well tank. There will always be a master shut off valve somewhere. This should be in the basement, crawl space, or utility room.

Next manually drain the system (as much as you can). This will alleviate the pressure off the system and get a head start on the winterizing process. Usually, opening a hose bib or drain on the backflow preventer will do nicely. Sometimes there is a drain inside the house. Warning, you might get wet, and you might want to use a bucket to catch the water. Once the pressure has been bled from the system and the water has drained down a little, it's time to hook up the compressor.

Hook up the air hose to the plug, or hose bib, on the copper pipe going into the ground, or on the water pipe coming out of the building. There should be a hose bib or drain somewhere after the main shut off valve where you can hook up the compressor hose. Make sure all other drains are closed (if you opened them in a previous step) except for the drain you attached the hose to.

Turn on the compressor and start winterizing. Turn on the controller to the furthest away first and work your way back to the nearest zone, and set it to run approximately 2 minutes. Now, 2 minutes might be too long or not long enough. Watch as water comes out of the sprinkler heads. Slowly the water will turn to mist. Then the mist will turn to air. At this point all the water is out of the zone. Please note, usually you do not have to get every single drop of water out of the system. If you continue to blow out the system (even though all the water is out), the heat from the air could damage the components. It's better to get the majority of water out, but not continuously run the compressor to get every drop of water out. A little residual water left in the zone will not hurt.

When all zones have been blown out, check each zone again to make sure they are free of water. It is better to run the zones with 2 short cycles as opposed to blowing each zone with a long cycle.

Turn off air compressor with a zone running and let the air run down before disconnecting the air hose.

Turn the valves on the backflow preventer at an angle; half open so water will drain out of behind the valves of the backflow preventer. Over the winter, its best to leave the ball valves or drains (on the backflow preventer) at a 45 degree angle. Sometimes condensation can build up inside the ball valves, thus cracking it when the temperature drops below the freezing point.

It is recommended to turn the controller off but leave it plugged in for the winter so as to keep moisture out of the controller.

You do not have to have a lot of air pressure to blow a system out, but you need a lot of volume. The small house compressors will work, but sometimes the air will blow over the top of the water, leaving water in the lines. This will cause damage to the system. Some compressors can charge up to 120PSI or more. However you do not need that much pressure to blow out the system. Actually, we never blow out a irrigation system with over 80PSI. Be warned, anything over 80PSI can damage the components of the system. We use 60PSI. Why, because the normal house water pressure is 60PSI, thus you should use the same amount of air pressure for winterizing.

If any of the steps are done incorrectly, it may cause damage to your system. Therefore, we recommend that it be done professionally. We do offer this service in the fall. If you have any questions, please call us and we will be happy to answer them for you.

-Rick Walter