A full zone-by-zone inspection once a year, at spring startup, suits most residential systems, with a mid-season walkthrough on larger or more complex properties. Anything with a well or lake supply, a commercial system, an older system, or a property where landscaping and construction work happens regularly benefits from more. The reason is simple: most irrigation faults waste water silently.
Why the interval is a year
Irrigation runs before dawn, underground, when nobody is watching. That single fact drives everything about maintenance intervals.
A broken head, a seeping valve, a leaking lateral or a misaligned rotor produces no noise, no alarm and frequently no visible symptom until the landscape starts to suffer or a bill arrives. The system reports nothing. So the interval is set by how long you are willing to let an undetected fault run, and a year — caught at startup, before the heavy watering season — is a reasonable balance for a typical residential system.
The other reason for annual timing is that spring is when winter damage surfaces. Freeze-cracked fittings, autumn wire cuts and last season’s mower damage are all invisible while the system sits depressurised, and all appear the moment it is charged.
What raises the frequency
| Factor | Why |
|---|---|
| Commercial property | Higher zone counts, higher consumption, and irrigation nobody on site is watching |
| Large or high-zone-count system | More components, more failure points, and more ground to cover |
| Well, lake or pump supply | Pump equipment, filtration and sediment add failure modes a meter-fed system does not have |
| System over roughly fifteen years old | Components at the end of their service life fail more often |
| Mature tree canopy and root growth | Roots displace heads, crush laterals and shift coverage over time |
| Frequent landscaping, fencing or construction work | Every trench, post hole and bed edging is a chance to cut a line or a wire |
| Steep grade | Runoff and settling both change how a system performs, and both develop gradually |
| Drip zones | Emitters clog, filters load and headers are close to the surface |
| A recent unexplained bill increase | Something is running that should not be, and it will not stop on its own |
Want this looked at rather than read about?
Diagnostic-first visits across North Georgia. Call 770.335.8595 or request service — you get an estimate before any work begins.
What an inspection covers
- Every zone run and walked from start to finish — the part with no substitute.
- Every head checked: operation, retraction, grade, alignment, nozzle and screen condition, and whether it is the right head for the spot.
- Coverage assessed — head-to-head overlap intact, no dry gaps, nothing watering pavement or structures.
- Pressure measured, static and while zones run, to distinguish a supply problem from a system problem and to identify misting from excess pressure.
- Valves checked for opening, closing and seeping, with valve boxes opened and inspected.
- Electrical testing: resistance on every station to catch marginal solenoids and developing wire faults before they fail.
- Controller programming reviewed against the season, the soil, the slope and the watering window.
- Rain sensor confirmed present, sited correctly, intact and actually in circuit rather than bypassed.
- Meter watched with all zones off, to detect a mainline or valve leak that shows nothing at the surface.
- Findings written down, prioritised into what needs doing now and what can wait.
Inspection, tune-up or repair?
These get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing, which matters when comparing what you are being offered.
An inspection is diagnostic. It tells you the condition of the system and what it needs, with nothing repaired.
A tune-up is an inspection plus the small adjustments that can be made on the spot — head alignment, raising a sunken head, nozzle changes, clearing screens, programming corrections. It is the most useful annual service for most systems because a real proportion of irrigation waste is adjustment rather than failure.
A repair is parts and labour on a specific fault, and it follows from one of the above.
As general North Georgia market figures, a full zone-by-zone inspection commonly runs roughly $95 to $225 — a market estimate, not a quote. Irrigation Medics bills $125 for the first hour on site and $80 per hour after, with parts separate and an estimate before work begins, so an inspection and the small fixes that come out of it often happen in the same visit. See what an irrigation tune-up includes.
Related answers
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Services that fix this
Irrigation System Inspection
Every zone run, every head watched, every fault written down — before it becomes an expensive repair.
Read more →Irrigation Maintenance
Spring startup, seasonal adjustment and winterization — the work that stops repairs from happening.
Read more →Commercial Irrigation Repair
Multi-controller sites, large zone counts and landscapes that have to look right every day.
Read more →Where we work
Irrigation Medics repairs irrigation systems across Hall County and the Lake Lanier communities, the Gwinnett corridor through Duluth, Suwanee and Buford, and North Fulton and Forsyth — Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Milton, Roswell and Cumming. Same rates throughout. See the service area.