This week we winterized two sprinkler systems that our clients could not arrange to have us take care of this past fall. Needless to say, waiting till January is not recommended and potential for catastrophic sprinkler failure in the spring.
I understand that sometimes life events cause us to forget or not take notice or not prioritize important maintenance required around the home or business. I am glad that these clients finally called us and had us service their system at this late date. The winterizing went well as the weather was warm enough and we were able to blow water out of the system. It doesn’t appear to be any significant damage however we did have several nights that temperatures dipped into the teens and single digits. There is no doubt that these systems were in a frozen state for several days. Not good. As we all know, frozen water in a contained system expands and is strong enough to split steel pipe, concrete, and just about anything else holding it. What probably happened is that the pipe, fittings, sprinkler heads stretched just a little bit to accompany the frozen water and enough to not crack. That’s ok and good for the client however, my experience has been, down the road, that sprinkler systems not winterized have a shorter lifespan. The stretched-out pipe is weakened and eventually ruptures. Now you start to see pipe breaks during the summer and sometimes entire runs of pipe. The client always forgets the time they forgot to winterize and cannot understand why this problem occurs. Always a good idea to document your service work especially to anticipate issues clients may have.
