The GTA sprinkler maintenance checklist — spring, mid-season, fall.

Before you turn the water on, walk every zone and look at every head. Heads cracked from a snow plow, ice heave, or a deep frost shove will be obvious — broken bodies, missing nozzles, mulch piled on top, sunk below grade. Mark anything broken so you (or we) know where to focus the repair pass.

Also check your backflow assembly is clear of debris and visible — but don't touch it.

Slowly opening the main shut-off, watching pressure climb on a gauge, listening for hisses, walking the system to spot pooling — this is what a professional spring opening covers. Done wrong (cranking the main open fast on a dry system), it can rupture seals or send a slug of debris through valves you can't reach.

Once the system is pressurized, manually run each zone for 60-90 seconds from the controller. Watch every head pop up, spray its pattern, and retract. Note any that don't pop, spray sideways, mist heavily, or won't retract. This is the single most valuable 15-minute task of the season.

Schedules need adjusting for the new season — May is usually short cycles 2× per week, June ramps up. If you're comfortable in the Hydrawise app, you can do it yourself. If not, we cover this on every spring opening visit, and re-tune again in July if needed.

Visual: confirm the assembly is intact, no cracks, no dripping, insulation jacket removed. That part is fine to do yourself. Anything beyond visual — testing the assembly, opening test cocks, certifying the device — is regulated by Ontario and requires a certified backflow tester (PJL refers out for this; we don't hold the certification).

Mulch settled or grass overgrown around heads? Spray will hit the mulch instead of the lawn. Pull mulch back from the head body, trim grass, confirm the head pops up clear of obstruction. 5-minute job per zone, real coverage difference.

Once a month — easiest is the first cycle of the month, while you're outside anyway — walk every zone while it runs. Same drill as spring: heads up, spray right, no misting, no pooling, no dry patches. Spring tune held? Great. Something off? Note it.

Open the Hydrawise app, check alerts (stuck zones, missed runs, low pressure events), look at the runtime history. If a zone has been running 2 minutes shorter for three weeks, that's a clogged head or a partial valve failure surfacing — call us before it becomes a brown patch.

30% higher than last year for the same weather? Something is leaking or running too long. 30% lower? A zone may not be running at all. Your water bill is the cheapest leak detector you have — read it.

If you have drip zones for vegetable gardens or beds, walk them once a month and confirm every emitter is wetting. Clogs from mineral buildup or sediment are common; pulling and clearing an emitter is a 30-second job. Replacing a whole bed of dead tomatoes is not.

Any time someone other than you has been digging on the property, run every nearby zone within 48 hours. Cut wires, sheared heads, severed lateral lines — these are the most common causes of mid-season repair calls. A bent head you can twist back; a cut wire is ours.

Just had aeration, overseed, or sod laid? New grass needs short, frequent watering for 14-21 days, then a step-down to normal deep-and-infrequent. If you're not sure how to step the schedule, we'll re-tune Hydrawise on a service call.

Before we arrive for the close-down, run every zone one more time. Note anything not working — broken head, sluggish valve, wonky controller — so we can flag it for spring repair while we're already on-site. This is also when you take a few photos of head locations for next spring's reference.

Book your fall winterization for late October before the first hard freeze. Calibrated low-pressure compressor, zone-by-zone blow-out, controller suspended, system documented for spring. This is the most important non-negotiable on the entire calendar.

If your backflow assembly is above-ground (most are), wrap it in an insulated foam jacket before the first hard frost. Hardware-store item, $20-$40, slips on. This is supplementary protection — the real freeze protection comes from the winterization blow-out — but the jacket prevents nuisance freezes during shoulder-season cold snaps.

The Hydrawise needs to be set to winter / off mode after winterization so it doesn't try to run a frozen system in a January thaw. We do this as part of every fall winterization visit. If you didn't book a winterization (please book one), at minimum unplug the controller until spring.

Take 5 minutes and write down what didn't work this year. The zone that always had the dry corner, the head you kept tripping over, the section that browned in August. Keep the note for spring — it's the cheapest way to actually fix problems instead of forgetting them.