Following a couple of seasons with neighborhood irrigation system headaches, the board decided to remove this from the annual landscape maintenance contract and sought competitive bids from companies that specialize in irrigation systems. The work was awarded to the company that originally installed the system, Barthuly Irrigation.

As Barthuly began work to initiate the system for the summer season, a number of critical repairs were uncovered. Most notably, our system failed the required backflow testing. This failure made it necessary for some repairs to be made this year before it could be legally turned on for the season.

Because extensive irrigation system repairs were not budgeted for this year, the repairs necessary to get the system legally operational were prioritized:

• Repaired or replaced 3 backflow preventers
• Repaired 6 lateral pipe breaks to avoid flooding
• Replaced 2 damaged sprinkling rotors
• Repaired one controller wire
• Moved a malfunctioning zone board to an alternate control board

These repairs cost $2,754.60. The system is set to run early in the morning four days per week on alternate days for 30 minutes on rotor zones and 15 minutes on spray zones.

An estimated $12,000 in irrigation system repairs will be addressed in 2019:

• Replace 161 rotors that are either leaking around the seal or are not retracting properly
• Replace 42 spray heads that are also either leaking or not retracting
• Replace 1 system controller damaged when it fell off the brick wall to which it was attached

It is possible for the heads that don’t currently retract properly to be “decapitated,” resulting in ponding or “geysers.” Because of budget considerations, the board has consciously accepted this scenario and is working with Barthuly to complete monthly system inspections. These monthly inspections will identify improperly watered areas and urgent repairs.