Signs of Over Watering with a Sprinkler System

Signs of Overwatering with a Sprinkler System

Irrigation System Repair

Irrigation System Repair

Overwatering a lawn kills your grass by oversupplying your lawn with too much water allowing the soil to be over saturated. Overwatering can also cause newly purchased plants to drown or cause them to develop root rot over time. If your sprinkler system is not assessed and fine-tuned, the result of overwatering your landscape will kill your entire lawn. Overwatering occurs even when you are hand watering your lawn, so even if you don’t have a sprinkler system overwatering still happens. To stop providing your lawn too much water, the solution is to call a sprinkler technician to fine tune your system.

So if you are looking for signs your grass is getting to much water you need to look for compacted soil, necrotic ring spots, brown patches, and an increasing amount of water-borne insects like mosquitoes. Overwatering a lawn is actually worse than underwatering. A necrotic ring spot causes severe overwatering for a very long time and forms rings of dying grass all over your yard. Brown patches occur with overwatering and underwatering. Brown patches cause the grass to wilt and turn brown. Unfortunately, soil compaction occurs around parts that are hidden in shade. The problem with this issue is that it causes increased soil erosion.

Sprinkler Systems

Sprinkler Systems

If you discover any of these signs of overwatering, it is best to interrogate how much of your yard is getting grass and for how long. A great test is put a bowl out on your lawn and run your sprinkler system. You should come out and check it every 15 minutes. Once it reaches one inch in the bowl, you are done and that’s how long you should water your lawn. This is not a perfect test, since the water absorption by your soil may take more or less time depending on the type of soil you have.

A more exact way to assess the appropriate amount to water your lawn is to run your system every 15 minutes and take a shovel and check to see if the water saturates the soil to one inch deep, then you know exactly how long it takes. Since each soil is different and there are changes in the landscape from slopes to the hill, it’s a good idea to get an exact amount of time-based on this test. If you don’t want to stand out in your yard for 15 minutes at a time and prefer a professional to do it, call a sprinkler technician that knows how to fine tune the system to ensure you aren’t overwatering or underwatering your lawn.