Almost every irrigation company says it saves you water. Very few will write down what they actually do to earn that, or show you how they measured it. These are the six things PJL commits to on every property across Newmarket, Aurora, Markham and the GTA — plus a clear list of what we won't promise you.
Each one is a thing we do on the job, not a sentiment. If we ever don't do one of these on your property, that's a fair thing to hold us to.
On every service visit we check coverage and pressure before we extend a single run time. Dry spot on the lawn? That's a coverage problem until proven otherwise — a blocked nozzle, a sunk head, a bad arc, a pressure issue.
Your controller gets programmed to the watering bylaw that applies at your address — not a generic schedule — and we re-check it at every spring opening.
At every spring opening on a Hydrawise system, we pull last season's zone-by-zone history and compare it against the season before, so any change we make to run times is driven by what the system actually did.
Weather-adaptive smart control is standard on every new system we install — not an upsell line on the quote. Your system knows when it rained.
Every new PJL install uses pressure-regulated heads with low-pressure nozzles as standard — the same hardware that lets us back installs with a 3-year parts-and-labour warranty.
Any water-savings number we give you is calculated for your property, with the assumptions written down next to it — zone count, current schedule, local rate, soil and exposure.
Distribution uniformity — DU — is how evenly a zone applies water across its whole area. You measure it by setting catch cans out across the zone, running it, and comparing the volume in the driest cans against the average.
It matters more than run time, and here's the mechanism:
The driest patch sets the schedule for everyone. You keep adding minutes until that patch greens up — and by then the rest of the zone has taken on far more water than it needed. The lawn looks acceptable and the bill looks terrible.
Every part of the zone receives roughly the same depth of water. The run time can drop to what the turf actually needs, because there's no dry corner dragging the schedule upward.
This is why we check coverage first and touch run times last. Correcting spacing, nozzle selection, arc overlap or a pressure problem lets the run time come down while the lawn gets better. Extending run times to compensate for poor uniformity does the opposite of both, slowly.
Most York Region municipalities run an odd/even schedule tied to your house number, with permitted windows in the early morning and the evening. The differences between them are real, and they're the reason a generic schedule isn't good enough.
| Municipality | Day schedule | Permitted windows | In effect | Local difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Newmarket | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Year-round | Restriction applies all year, not just the summer season. |
| Richmond Hill | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Continuous watering is capped at 4 hours. |
| Markham | Odd/even by house number | One window per day | Seasonal (May–Sept) | You may use one permitted window per day — not both. |
| Aurora | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Standard York Region pattern. |
| Vaughan | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Standard York Region pattern. |
| King City (King Twp.) | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Standard pattern; many properties are on private wells and fall outside the bylaw entirely. |
| Whitchurch-Stouffville | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Standard York Region pattern. |
| East Gwillimbury | Odd/even by house number | Early morning & evening | Seasonal (May–Sept) | Standard York Region pattern. |
This table scrolls sideways on narrow screens — swipe it, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
Watering inside the permitted window isn't only a compliance matter. The early-morning window is also when evaporation and wind loss are lowest, so a bylaw-compliant schedule is usually the efficient one anyway. Midday watering on a hot, breezy day can lose a meaningful share of the water before it reaches the soil.
If your property is on a private well, municipal outdoor watering restrictions generally don't apply to you — but the efficiency argument does, and so does your pump.
A promise about water use is worth exactly as much as the measurement behind it. Here's what's actually available on your property, in descending order of precision — and we'll tell you which tier you're in rather than implying a level of measurement your hardware can't support.
The list below exists because these are the things our industry is loosest about. Naming them is part of the promise.
None of this means we won't help. It means we'd rather tell you where our boundary is now than discover it together on your property later.
We'll walk the zones with you, check coverage and pressure, and put real numbers against your current schedule.