When Should I Start My Sprinkler System in Georgia?

Timing

Two things decide when to start: whether another hard freeze is likely, and whether anything actually needs watering yet. North Georgia winters are mild enough that irrigation components generally survive, but cold enough that freezes are real, and a system charged with water ahead of a late freeze can crack a backflow device, a valve body or an exposed riser.

Early spring is the usual answer, and there is no advantage to being early. Cool weather and spring rainfall meet most of the landscape’s needs, so a system started in March and immediately run on a summer schedule wastes water without helping anything. Starting a few weeks later costs nothing.

There is one exception worth naming: new sod, new plantings and newly seeded areas need water on their own timetable regardless of the calendar, and they are the reason some systems come back into service earlier than they otherwise would.

Why the first run of the year is different

Through winter the system sits depressurised, and any damage — a freeze-cracked fitting, a lateral crushed by a vehicle, a wire cut during autumn landscaping, a head broken by a mower months ago — is completely silent. Nothing reveals it until water is moving.

Charging the system fast makes that worse. Opening the irrigation shutoff valve quickly sends a pressure surge down mainline that has been empty for months, and that surge is capable of breaking fittings that would otherwise have held. Opening it slowly lets the line fill and the air escape without the hammer.

And a system started unattended — turned on, programmed, walked away from — can run for weeks with a broken head pouring water into the ground before anybody notices. The spring water bill is where that gets discovered, and by then it has been happening for a while.

A proper startup, in order

1. Open the irrigation shutoff valve slowly. A quarter turn, wait, another quarter turn. Let the mainline fill and the air work its way out rather than arriving as a surge.
2. Listen at the manifold and the meter before running anything. With every zone off, the system should be silent and the meter still. Movement means the mainline or a valve is leaking.
3. Walk each zone while it runs. One zone at a time, watched from start to finish. This is the whole point of the exercise and there is no substitute for it.
4. Check every head. Broken caps, missing heads, heads that will not pop up, heads that will not retract, heads sunk below grade, heads knocked out of alignment over winter, clogged nozzles and screens.
5. Check the spray patterns. Head-to-head overlap intact, nothing watering pavement or the side of the house, no gaps between arcs, no misting that suggests excess pressure.
6. Look for wet ground that should not be wet. A soft or saturated area away from a running head is a lateral leak. On a zone that is off, it is a valve or mainline problem.
7. Test the rain sensor. Confirm it is intact, correctly sited and actually in circuit — not left on bypass from last year.
8. Reprogram for spring, not summer. Minimal run times to start, inside the 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. window for publicly supplied water, stepping up as the season warms.
9. Write down what each station waters. Inside the controller door. It makes every adjustment and every repair for the rest of the year faster.

What we find most often at startup

Doing it yourself, or having it done

Much of this list is genuinely within reach of a homeowner willing to spend an hour walking the property while each zone runs, and doing exactly that is worthwhile even if you also book a professional startup — you will know what to point at.

What a technician adds is the electrical side, the leaks that are not visible, and the judgment calls. Resistance readings on every station catch marginal solenoids and developing wire faults before they become mid-summer failures. Pressure measurement identifies whether misting or weak throw is a supply problem or a system problem. And a hydraulic leak under a lawn frequently shows nothing at the surface at all.

Irrigation Medics bills $125 for the first hour on site and $80 per hour after, with parts separate and an estimate before work begins. As a general North Georgia market figure, spring startup on a typical residential system commonly runs roughly $85 to $200 — a market estimate, not a quote. See irrigation maintenance.

Related answers

• Do I Need to Winterize My Sprinkler System in Georgia?Yes, though North Georgia needs less than colder regions. Winters here are mild enough that deeply buried pipe is generally safe, but cold enough…
• How Often Should an Irrigation System Be Inspected?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…
• How Can I Check My Irrigation System Myself?Run one zone at a time and walk it from start to finish. That single habit catches most irrigation faults, because almost everything wrong with a…
• What Is an Irrigation Tune-Up?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…

Services that fix this

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.