Ottawa Irrigation System Installation

The process of a new irrigation system installation: Once you have had Your Free Ottawa Irrigation System Estimate and chosen Running Irrigation as the company to go with as your Ottawa area irrigation contractor, the planning process will begin immediately. Acceptance of the contract is the first step, at which time a 25% deposit of the final price is required in order to secure a date in our booking schedule. The nextstep will be to determine a date for the installation. An average sized job will normally take 1-2 days.

Utilities Locates:  We request locates of the utilities lines (gas, bell, cable, hydro,etc.) to be done on your property, and this normally takes 5 business days to get done. Therefore the installation date needs to be at least 5 days away from the date of acceptance, as these locates are mandatory.

The Installation

We normally aim to arrive at your home around 8am on the days of installation of your irrigation system. We are flexible, however, in order to ensure a complete installation in 1-2 days, it is best to be on-site for the entire day. Once we have all of our equipment and materials setup, we will begin. The following steps will be taken:

Plumbing: If you are on city water, with copper plumbing inside the house, we hire a licensed plumber who will come and tap into your city water source and feed the water to the outside by drilling a hole in your foundation. If you are on a well, we will do the plumbing ourselves, tapping into your well pump line and bringing the water outside by drilling a whole in the foundation (if required).

Flag out the system: We will place flags around your property in each location that a sprinkler head will be installed, just as seen on the design plan we provide you after the quote as well as in the contract proposal.

Master Valve: The master valve is installed and connected to the water feeder line right where the plumbing comes outside of your house. The master valve is critical in ensuring that there is no water leakage and wasted water if any problems ever occur in the zone lines or valves. It turns on when any of the zones are watering, and remains off the rest of the time.

Pulling the pipe and wire: The mainline pipe is then run from the master valve to the zone valves. The zone lines are then run from each zone valve to the respective heads in each zone, maked by the flags. The pipe can be laid underground by 2 different methods. The first method is by pulling the pipe underground with a Ditch Witch vibratory plow, and the second being by hand digging, which involves removing the sod, digging a trench with a trenching shovel and then laying the pipe in the trench. Both methods are very clean and will leave minimal evidence of excavation. All you will see are a few splits within the sod, which will heal within days. The wire is run concurrently with the pipe, from the controller to the master valve and then to each valve manifolde.

Installation of sprinkler heads: Once the pipe is pulled, there will be pipe sticking up from the ground at each sprinkler head flag. We dig a small hole where the sprinkler head will go, attach it to the pipe, and cover up the sprinkler, allowing it to sit flush with the grass level.

Installation of valve manifolds/boxes: The valve are connected together to form a valve manifold. This manifold will be buried in a valve box which has a green lid and will sit flush with your lawn. The purpose of the valve box is to ensure easy access to the valves for servicing purposes. The master valve is also enclosed in a small round valve box right by the plumbing source.

Automatic controller/timer: The automatic controller will be installed in a location of your choice. We normally recommend inside the garage. Once the controller is installed, the wires from the valves are connected. There is one wire for each valve, including the master valve. The controller works by sending an electric signal to the valves, all operating on a timer, at intervals which will be set by us. To read about how the valves work via this electrical signal, please see the blog on Irrigation 101.

 Clean-up: Once everything is installed, we do a meticulous clean, ensuring there is no visible dirt or loose grass on your property. Sometimes the grass is slightly elevated where the pipes or sprinkler heads were installed, and this is leveled out easily by tamping the soil. Once the clean-up is done your lawn will appear as if we were never even there.

Testing: The next step is to test the irrigation system to ensure that every head is providing efficient and uniform water coverage. Steps involved during this stage are adjusting the sprinkler heads to ensure the angle of spray (or rotation) is lined up exactly with the areas to be watered by that head; as well as adjusting the level of the spray, to ensure that it is spraying the correct distance and providing a uniform spray for the entire distance the water stream covers.

Demonstration: The final step is to demonstrate the system to you. We will show you how the controller works, and teach you how to use it in case you ever decide to make any changes or are just the type of person who likes to know how it works. We will take care of the initial programming of the controller for optimal watering, including seasonal adjustments. We will then show you each zone one at a time, and allow you to see the system working, and show you all of the heads in operation and how to adjust them if required. Once we have showed you the entire system, and you are 100% satisfied, the installation of your new Ottawa area irrigation system is complete. We will follow-up with you when the time comes to schedule a time for taking care of your system winterization, and again in the Spring when it comes time to re-open your system.

Now it is time to sit back, relax and enjoy your new automatic inground sprinkler system.