Landscaping services
An irrigation system does not save water. A well-zoned system with a sensor and a seasonally adjusted schedule saves water; the same pipe and the same heads on a fixed clock waste it. EPA WaterSense puts national outdoor use at nearly 8 billion gallons a day and says as much as half of it is wasted through inefficiency — which is a statement about scheduling and design, not about equipment.
HyreYard is not a landscaping company. We plant nothing, grade nothing, build no wall, cut no tree and pull no permit. This page explains the work so you can read a proposal and judge the company that wrote it.
Most systems are not broken, they are mis-scheduled or mis-zoned. These observations separate the two, and every one of them is free to make.
Irrigation quotes are usually written in components. These are what each component does, and the ones that decide whether a system wastes water are not the expensive ones.
| Spray heads | Fixed pop-ups throwing a fan, short throw, high application rate. CSU Extension: “Pop-up spray heads typically apply 1-2½ inches of water per hour, whereas rotor heads only deliver ¼ to ¾ inch of water per hour.” High rate means a short run time and a real risk of runoff on slopes and clay. |
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| Rotors | Rotating streams, long throw, low application rate — a fraction of what a spray head delivers per hour. Suited to larger open areas, and they need much longer run times to apply the same depth. Never on the same zone as a spray head. |
| Drip and micro-irrigation | Emitters delivering water at the plant, at the soil, with almost nothing lost to wind or evaporation. The right answer for beds, shrubs and trees, and a different zone from anything spraying. |
| Zones and valves | The design itself. A zone is a group of heads that always run together for the same time, so every plant on it gets the same water whether or not it wants it. |
| Controller | The brain, and the cheapest place to buy efficiency. EPA estimates a WaterSense-labelled model can save around 15,000 gallons a year in a household. |
| Rain sensor | Stops a cycle when it has rained. Inexpensive, frequently required by local ordinance, and routinely found disconnected on systems that have been serviced. |
| Soil moisture sensor | Waters on the basis of what is in the soil rather than what happened in the sky. Better information than rainfall alone, because it accounts for what the soil already holds. |
| Backflow prevention device | Keeps irrigation water out of the drinking supply. This is the part governed by plumbing code, often requiring a permit and periodic testing, and it is the reason irrigation work is a licensed activity in many jurisdictions. |
| Pressure regulation | Unglamorous and consequential. Too high and the nozzles mist and drift; too low and the pattern collapses and the overlap fails. |
A design that begins with a head count has begun in the wrong place. Every item below constrains the design, and getting them wrong produces a system that cannot be scheduled correctly at any run time.
The design steps are the ones that determine whether the system can ever be run efficiently. Trenching and gluing pipe is the visible part and the least consequential.
Gallons per minute available and static pressure at the source, measured on site. Every zone in the design is sized against that number, and a design built on an assumed figure produces zones that cannot deliver their pattern.
Group plantings by water requirement, exposure and slope. This is the design decision that sets the ceiling on how efficient the system can ever be, and it cannot be corrected later by any schedule or controller.
One head type per zone, nozzles matched so the whole zone applies at the same rate. A zone of mismatched nozzles cannot be scheduled correctly for all of itself.
Sprinklers are designed so each throws to the adjacent head. Stretching spacing to save heads produces permanent dry arcs that get blamed on the soil for years afterwards.
The tie into the supply and the device that stops irrigation water returning to it. Code-governed, often permitted, often requiring a licensed installer and periodic testing.
Mainline, laterals, valves in accessible boxes and low-voltage wiring to the controller. Pressure-tested before anything is backfilled, because a leak found after backfill is an excavation.
Flush with the finished surface, each arc adjusted so water lands on planting rather than on pavement, walls or fences.
Rain or soil moisture sensor wired and tested, then run times set from measured precipitation rates rather than defaults. CSU Extension on the practical seasonal tool: “the Percent Key on most controllers provides an easy method to fine-tune for the actual site by adjusting the percentage up or down in 10% increments”
The step almost never included and the one that proves the system works. CSU Extension’s method: “Place six identical, straight-sided, flat-bottomed cans randomly around the area between sprinkler heads in the same zone. Turn on the sprinklers for exactly ten minutes. Pour all the water into one can. With a ruler, measure the depth of the water in the can. This is your precipitation rate in inches per hour.” And its warning: “Do not use short cans like tuna cans as they are too shallow, and water may splash out.” Uneven cans are a finding: “If the amount of water in some containers is significantly more or less than others, the system is poorly designed, or head(s) are malfunctioning.”
A zone map, the measured precipitation rate per zone, the run times and the seasonal adjustments. Without this, the next person to touch the controller is guessing, and that person is usually you.
Ranked by what the published evidence supports rather than by what is easiest to sell. The first three cost the least.
| Turning the schedule down | Free, and it addresses EPA’s central finding directly: “as much as 50 percent of this water is wasted due to overwatering caused by inefficiencies in irrigation methods and systems” Most systems are set once and left, and overwatering is the default state. |
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| A rain or soil moisture sensor | Low cost, and it removes the most visible waste there is — a system running in the rain. Many jurisdictions require one, and many existing sensors are found disconnected. |
| Cycle and soak on slopes and clay | Free, a controller setting. CSU Extension: “On slopes or compacted, clayey soils, water is generally applied faster than it can soak into the soil, resulting in water being wasted as it runs off-site. The cycle and soak approach cuts the irrigation period into multiple short runs with soak-in time in between.” The same total water goes into the soil instead of onto the street. |
| A WaterSense-labelled controller | The one upgrade with a published saving attached: about 15,000 gallons a year per household on EPA’s estimate, and 390 billion gallons and $4.5 billion a year if adopted nationally. |
| Re-zoning | Expensive, disruptive, and the only real fix where lawn and beds share a zone. This is why the original design matters so much: it is the decision that is hardest to undo. |
| Converting beds to drip | Removes spray, wind drift and evaporation from everything that is not lawn, and lets beds run on their own far shorter schedule. |
| Watering at night or early morning | CSU Extension: “Many water providers encourage homeowners to water their yards between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. Winds are typically less at night, and evaporation loss will be lower.” Costs nothing beyond changing a start time, and is frequently what local restrictions require anyway. |
| Reducing irrigated lawn area | The largest saving available, and often subsidised. Many water utilities run rebate programmes for replacing irrigated turf. |
| Adding more heads | The intervention most often proposed and the one least likely to help, unless the specific finding is a coverage gap between existing heads. More heads on a badly zoned system waters the wrong things faster. |
Irrigation is buried within a day of being installed, and its performance is invisible unless someone measures it. A quote that lists zone count and head count has described the hardware and said nothing about whether it can be scheduled.
Unlike hardscape, an irrigation fault does not announce itself by cracking. It shows up as a brown arc, a wet corner or a water bill, all of which are attributed to something else for years. The documentation is the defence.
Irrigation is priced on zones, on trenching distance and on the point of connection. The items that decide whether the system wastes water are small fractions of the total, which is the awkward economics of this trade.
| Factor | Why it changes the number |
|---|---|
| Number of zones | The primary driver. Each zone is a valve, wiring, a manifold connection and a controller station. Correct hydrozoning increases the zone count and the price, and it is the thing worth paying for. |
| Available flow | Low flow at the source forces more, smaller zones to deliver the same coverage. The measurement at the start of the design changes the quote. |
| Trenching distance and surface | Metres of trench, and what has to be crossed. Going under an existing driveway or path is a separate operation with its own price. |
| Point of connection and backflow device | A plumbing operation with code requirements, often a permit, and in many places a licensed trade. This line varies more by jurisdiction than by property. |
| Head type and count | Rotors cover more ground per head than sprays; drip is priced by run length and emitter count. Correct spacing sets the count, not the budget. |
| Controller and sensors | A small share of the total and the largest share of the efficiency. EPA’s estimate for a labelled controller is about 15,000 gallons a year per household. |
| Soil and rock | Trenching through rock, roots or heavy clay is slow, and it can change the machine. |
| Restoration | Putting the lawn and beds back over the trenches. Cheapest by far when irrigation is installed before the sod rather than after. |
| Annual running cost | The line nobody quotes and the one you pay forever. One inch over a thousand square feet is 623 gallons. Multiply by your irrigated area and by the inches you apply in a season, and that is the real cost of the schedule the controller is set to. |
| Winterisation and annual service | A recurring cost in freezing climates, and a genuine one — a mainline left charged through a freeze is an excavation. |
HyreYard publishes no installed price per zone and holds no dataset of irrigation invoices. The running cost is different: it is arithmetic on your own bill, and the lawn water cost calculator does it with your rate.
Before you add heads, measure what the ones you have apply. Almost every irrigation complaint arrives as "it is not watering enough", and the most common true cause is a zone applying water faster than the soil accepts it, or a run time set from a default rather than from a rate. The measurement costs ten minutes: “Place six identical, straight-sided, flat-bottomed cans randomly around the area between sprinkler heads in the same zone. Turn on the sprinklers for exactly ten minutes. Pour all the water into one can. With a ruler, measure the depth of the water in the can. This is your precipitation rate in inches per hour.” Do that for each zone and you have the one number every schedule depends on, along with a uniformity finding for free — “If the amount of water in some containers is significantly more or less than others, the system is poorly designed, or head(s) are malfunctioning.” With those numbers, a schedule is arithmetic. Without them, every run time on the controller is a guess, including the installer’s.
The full ten-point checklist is on choosing a landscaping company, and the lines a comparable bid contains are on reading a landscaping estimate.
The design fault no schedule can rescue. CSU Extension: “Pop-up spray heads typically apply 1-2½ inches of water per hour, whereas rotor heads only deliver ¼ to ¾ inch of water per hour.” Whatever run time you choose, one part of that zone is wrong.
Turf and established shrubs want different amounts of water on different frequencies. Sharing a zone means one is overwatered every single run, permanently, and the fix is re-zoning rather than rescheduling.
Plant water demand varies enormously across a season. CSU Extension describes the practical tool: “The controller would be set for the July/August irrigation schedule. The percent key would be set at 50%, 67% or 100%, based on the season.” One adjustment a month is most of the available saving.
Watering during rain is the most visible waste in the category, it is cheap to prevent, and disconnected sensors are a routine finding on serviced systems.
Water on the pavement is metered water you have paid for. CSU Extension: “On slopes or compacted, clayey soils, water is generally applied faster than it can soak into the soil, resulting in water being wasted as it runs off-site. The cycle and soak approach cuts the irrigation period into multiple short runs with soak-in time in between.” Cycle and soak is a setting, not an upgrade.
Drift and evaporation take a share of the water before it lands. CSU Extension: “Many water providers encourage homeowners to water their yards between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. Winds are typically less at night, and evaporation loss will be lower.”
Overlap is the design assumption. Stretched spacing creates permanent dry arcs which then get treated as a fertility or disease problem for years.
EPA WaterSense: “Watering plants or grass too frequently can drown plants or result in shallow roots” Frequent shallow watering keeps roots at the surface, so the landscape becomes less drought-tolerant the more often it is watered.
EPA’s target is inclusive: “Your landscape will typically require one inch of water a week, including rainfall, and that can vary depending on where you live, recent weather, and the plants in your landscape.” A week with an inch of rain needs no irrigation, and a controller with no sensor does not know that.
Trenching through new turf disturbs exactly the roots that have just established, and leaves settled trench lines for a season. It goes in first.
No zone map, no measured precipitation rates, no as-built. Every future repair, adjustment and schedule change then starts from scratch, and the person starting from scratch is you.
Only if it is designed and scheduled to. EPA WaterSense is blunt about the aggregate picture: households use “nearly 8 billion gallons of water each day, mainly for landscape irrigation”, and “as much as 50 percent of this water is wasted due to overwatering caused by inefficiencies in irrigation methods and systems” A timer that runs the same zones for the same minutes in April and August, with no sensor, applies water on a schedule that has nothing to do with what the plants need — and it does it reliably, whether you are at home or not, which is exactly why automated systems can use more water than hand watering rather than less. What saves water is hydrozoning, a sensor, a seasonal adjustment and run times calculated from a measured application rate. The equipment is necessary for that and it does not deliver it on its own.
As many as you have distinct watering requirements, with the number capped by how much flow is available at the source. The requirement is set by plant type, sun exposure, slope and head type: lawn in full sun, lawn in shade, shrub beds on drip, a south-facing slope and a level area each want a different amount of water at a different rate, and anything sharing a zone gets the same treatment whether it suits it or not. Available flow imposes the other constraint, because a zone can only run as many heads as the supply can feed at the correct pressure — low flow means more zones, each smaller. A quote that proposes fewer zones is usually cheaper and usually worse, and the cost of it is paid every week for the life of the system in water applied to plants that did not want it.
Long enough to apply the depth you intend, which means the run time is arithmetic once you know two numbers: the depth you want and the zone’s application rate in inches per hour. Nobody can give you the second one, because it depends on head type, nozzle, pressure and spacing in your own garden — CSU Extension publishes the ranges to show how wide the gap is: “Pop-up spray heads typically apply 1-2½ inches of water per hour, whereas rotor heads only deliver ¼ to ¾ inch of water per hour.” Measure it instead: “Place six identical, straight-sided, flat-bottomed cans randomly around the area between sprinkler heads in the same zone. Turn on the sprinklers for exactly ten minutes. Pour all the water into one can. With a ruler, measure the depth of the water in the can. This is your precipitation rate in inches per hour.” Then divide. Two adjustments follow. If zones overlap, CSU notes “In many lawn sections, one zone waters the area from the left while another zone waters the same area from the right. In this situation, cut run times for zones in half, so that each applies half of the needed water.” And if water runs off before the time is up, split the run into cycles with soak time between them rather than reducing the total.
It is the upgrade with an actual published number attached, which is rare in this category. EPA estimates that a WaterSense-labelled irrigation controller can save a household roughly 15,000 gallons a year, and that if every household in the country with an irrigation system used one, the saving would be around 390 billion gallons and $4.5 billion annually. Two caveats worth holding. First, a controller adjusts run times; it cannot fix a zone that mixes lawn and shrubs or heads spaced too far apart, because those are design faults and the controller has only one lever per zone. Second, the saving depends on it being set up properly — a smart controller commissioned with default zone parameters and never reviewed is an ordinary timer with an app. Look for the WaterSense label specifically rather than the word "smart", which is marketing.
Practically, yes, and in a good many jurisdictions it is legally required — the requirement is local, so check with your water provider or building department rather than assuming. The argument for one is that it removes the most conspicuous waste in the category at very low cost: a system watering through a downpour. A soil moisture sensor is better information again, because it responds to what the soil actually holds rather than to what fell from the sky, which accounts for the difference between an inch on saturated clay and an inch on dry sand. The practical warning: sensors get disconnected. They are bypassed during a repair or a winterisation and never reconnected, so a system that has one on paper may not have one in operation. Test it, by triggering the sensor and confirming the cycle stops.
Work down this list before adding water anywhere. A dry arc or a dry patch between two heads is a spacing or pressure problem — sprinklers are designed to throw to the neighbouring head, and where that overlap fails nothing fixes it but correcting the spacing or the pressure. A dry area that matches a zone boundary means that zone is under-running relative to its neighbour, often because head types are mixed on it. A head blocked by a shrub, knocked out of alignment by a mower, or sunk below grade waters a small circle around itself. Misting at the nozzle means pressure is too high and the water is drifting away before it lands. And a patch on a slope or on clay may be receiving plenty of water and keeping none of it, because it is running off before it soaks in. Increasing the run time is the last resort on that list and the first thing most people try.
Early morning or night, and the reasoning is straightforward. CSU Extension: “Many water providers encourage homeowners to water their yards between 9 p.m. and 9 a.m. Winds are typically less at night, and evaporation loss will be lower.” Water applied in the middle of a hot, windy afternoon loses a share to drift and evaporation before it reaches the soil, and that share is simply money. There is a counter-argument that prolonged overnight leaf wetness can favour some turf diseases, which is why early morning — starting late enough that the system finishes as the sun comes up — is often given as the compromise. Two practical constraints usually settle it for you: local restrictions frequently mandate a window, and CSU notes a scheduling detail worth knowing if you run multiple cycles — “Generally, the controller is set to cycle again after all the zones have run. If the controller only has a few zones, keep in mind that the start times need to be at least one hour apart.”
That is a calculation on your own bill rather than a national figure, and it is worth doing because it is usually larger than people expect. The arithmetic is fixed: one inch of water over a thousand square feet is 623 gallons. Multiply by your irrigated area in thousands of square feet, then by the number of inches you apply across a season, then by your rate. Two things make it worse than the first estimate. Many utilities use tiered rates, so heavy summer irrigation pushes the household into the most expensive tier and the marginal inch costs more than the average one. And many bills charge sewer volume on metered water, though some utilities exclude irrigation or offer a separate meter. Run the numbers with your own rate on the lawn water cost calculator before deciding that a schedule change is not worth the trouble.
Information on this page is general and varies by climate, soil, grade, construction and local code. It is not horticultural, arboricultural or engineering advice, and a local building department, water utility or homeowners association can impose requirements that take precedence over anything written here. HyreYard is an independent landscaping resource and connection platform, not a landscaping company, and does not perform, supervise, inspect or warrant any outdoor work.
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