Irrigation and Sod Installation in Acworth and Across Georgia

Sprinkler systems built around the water you actually have

Every irrigation design starts with two numbers: the static pressure at the spigot and the gallons per minute the meter will give you. Those two decide how many heads go on a zone. Put too many on and every head in that zone throws short, which is why so many yards have a dry ring ten feet out from the sprinkler.

After that it is a matter of matching the head to the ground. Rotors for open turf, spray heads for the tight strips along a drive or a walk, drip line in the beds where overhead water just feeds the weeds and rots the mulch.

What good zone design looks like

• Head to head coverage. The spray from one head reaches the next one. Sprinklers are built to overlap, not to each cover their own circle.
• Turf and beds on separate zones. Always. They do not want the same water and they do not want it for the same length of time.
• Sun and shade split. A fescue strip under a hardwood does not want the run time an open Bermuda lawn needs in July.
• Slopes on their own zone so you can run short cycles and let it soak instead of watching it run down the hill.
• Heads set back off the concrete. Water on the driveway is money on the driveway.

Backflow prevention

A sprinkler system tied into the house supply needs a backflow preventer. It is the device that keeps water sitting in a lateral line, down in the mulch with the fertilizer, from being pulled back into the drinking water when pressure drops. Georgia water providers require one, and most of them require a certified test on a set schedule.

We install it, we set it where it can be tested without digging it up, and we tell you what you own so the first test notice is not a surprise. Ask your water provider what they want for your address, because the interval is not the same everywhere in the metro.

Programming the controller for Georgia clay

Clay does not take water as fast as a sprinkler puts it down. Run a zone twenty minutes straight on a grade and most of that water ends up in the street. The fix is cycle and soak: run the same zone three times for seven minutes with a gap between, and the ground gets all of it.

• Water in the early morning. Between 4 and 9 the wind is down, evaporation is low, and the blades dry before dark.
• Use the seasonal adjust. A schedule that is right for July is roughly double what the lawn needs in April.
• Put a rain sensor on it. It pays for itself the first wet week in March.
• Georgia limits landscape watering by time of day, and newly installed sod and seed get an exemption window. Ask your water provider what applies to your address before you set the clock.

Repair or replace

Most systems are worth repairing. Heads, nozzles, a cut lateral, a stuck valve and a dead solenoid are all normal wear, and none of them are a reason to start over.

Repair it

• Heads that are broken, sunk, tilted or throwing the wrong pattern
• A wet spot that never dries, which is usually a cracked lateral or a bad seal
• A zone that will not come on, which is usually the solenoid or the wire and not the valve body
• A controller that lost its program, or one nobody ever showed you how to use

Worth replacing

• A layout built for a yard that no longer exists, where the beds moved and half the heads water the fence
• Zones carrying more heads than the water supply can feed, which is a design problem no repair fixes
• Poly line that has been patched a dozen times and splits somewhere new every spring
• No backflow preventer at all, or one nobody can locate

Sod that survives a Georgia summer

The right grass comes down to sun, traffic and how much you are willing to water. Here is the honest version.

Bermuda

The default for an open, sunny Georgia lawn. It takes heat, drought and foot traffic better than anything else we install and it repairs itself. It wants at least six hours of direct sun, and it goes fully dormant and tan from the first hard frost until April. If a green winter lawn matters to you, Bermuda is not your grass.

Zoysia

Denser and finer than Bermuda and it will take a few hours of shade. It chokes weeds out better than anything else on this list. It also goes dormant in winter, it costs more, and it is slower to knit in, so it wants an owner who will water it right through the first summer.

Tall fescue

The cool season option and the only one here that stays green through a North Georgia winter. It handles shade under hardwoods, which is why so much of Cobb County is in fescue. The trade is August. Fescue in open sun needs real water in July and August or it thins, and it usually wants overseeding every fall.

Centipede

Low input and happy in acidic clay. It does not want much fertilizer and it does not want traffic. Good for a low-maintenance sunny yard, slow to recover once something tears it up.

Sod or seed, honestly

Sod costs more and gives you a lawn the day it goes down. Seed costs less and gives you a lawn if the weather cooperates and you water it for a month.

• Timing. Fescue seed goes down in September and that is the only reliable window. Bermuda seed goes in late spring. Sod can go down almost any month you can keep it wet.
• Erosion. On any real grade, seed washes. Sod holds the day it is laid.
• Weeds. Bare soil grows whatever blows in. Sod arrives as a finished stand of grass with no gaps to fill.
• Cost. Seed is a fraction of sod per square foot. Add the water and a month of your attention and the gap narrows.
• The short answer. Seed a big open backyard in September. Sod the front, sod anything on a grade, and sod anything that has to look finished this month.

Watering a new lawn

Sod dies at the seam from drying out, not in the middle of the piece. The first two weeks decide whether you bought a lawn or a bill.

1. Days 1 to 14. Keep the soil under the sod wet, not just the blades. In summer that is usually twice a day, morning and early afternoon, long enough to soak through into the dirt below.
2. Days 15 to 21. Once a day, longer run, in the morning.
3. Weeks 4 to 6. Every other day, longer still, so the roots chase the water down instead of sitting at the surface.
4. After that. About an inch a week including rain, split into two or three soakings, early morning.

Two tests worth doing. Set an empty tuna can on the lawn while a zone runs and time how long it takes to fill an inch. That is your run time. At two weeks, take a corner of a sod piece and pull up. If it resists, it has rooted.