An irrigation tune-up is a scheduled visit that runs every zone, corrects the small faults that accumulate over a season, and resets the controller schedule for current conditions. It differs from an inspection in that an inspection documents what is wrong while a tune-up fixes the minor items on the spot — aligning heads, cleaning nozzles, adjusting arcs, correcting run times. Most of its value is in restoring uniform coverage and sane scheduling, not in replacing parts.
What a tune-up covers
- Running every zone in turn and watching it operate rather than testing it from the controller.
- Straightening heads that have tilted, and raising or lowering heads sitting wrong relative to grade.
- Cleaning or replacing clogged nozzles and screens.
- Correcting arcs and radius so spray lands on landscape instead of driveways, walls and sidewalks.
- Checking rotors actually rotate through their full arc rather than stalling.
- Checking valve boxes for seepage, standing water and failing splices.
- Looking for the early signs of leaks — soft ground, unexplained green patches, a meter that creeps with the system off.
- Confirming the rain sensor, where one is fitted, actually interrupts the cycle.
- Resetting the controller program: run times, start times, days, and seasonal adjustment, inside the legal watering window.
Tune-up, inspection or startup: which do you need?
In practice a spring startup and a tune-up overlap heavily, and are often the same visit. The distinction that matters is against an inspection: if what you need is a decision — repair or replace, what to budget — then you want the documented zone-by-zone assessment, not a visit oriented around fixing small things.
| Visit | Purpose | Best time |
|---|---|---|
| Spring startup | Bring the system back into service, pressurise slowly, find winter damage | Early spring, before the first real watering need |
| Tune-up | Correct accumulated minor faults and reset the schedule | Spring, and again mid-season on larger systems |
| Inspection | Document system condition zone by zone and produce a prioritised repair list | Before buying a property, before deciding on major repairs, or after inheriting an undocumented system |
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.
Why scheduling is the part that pays for itself
Every season we find controllers running an installer schedule from years earlier: the same run times in October as in July, start times that put the cycle outside the legal watering window, two overlapping programs watering everything twice, and seasonal adjustment untouched at 100 percent all year.
Correcting that costs nothing in parts and changes the bill immediately. In North Georgia the specific corrections that matter most are splitting long run times into shorter cycles with soak periods between, because Piedmont clay cannot absorb water as fast as most systems apply it, and stepping run times down through autumn instead of watering at summer rates into cool weather.
Under the Georgia Water Stewardship Act, landscape watering with publicly supplied water is permitted only between 4 p.m. and 10 a.m., any day of the week, with wells, reuse water, hand watering and food gardens exempt and a 30-day allowance for newly installed landscape. On a large system, fitting every zone inside that window takes deliberate staggering of start times rather than one long program.
What it costs
Irrigation Medics bills $125 for the first hour on site and $80 per hour after, plus parts. A tune-up is charged as that time, so the cost tracks system size — a six-zone system is quick, a twenty-zone system is not. As general North Georgia market figures, spring startup commonly runs roughly $85 to $200 and a full zone-by-zone inspection roughly $95 to $225 for a typical residential system. Those are market estimates rather than quotes; see the cost guide.
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Services that fix this
Irrigation Maintenance
Spring startup, seasonal adjustment and winterization — the work that stops repairs from happening.
Read more →Irrigation System Inspection
Every zone run, every head watched, every fault written down — before it becomes an expensive repair.
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.