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Q & A:
Modern Water Management With Kyle McNerney, Founder Smart Water Management a subsidiary of Corbett, Inc.
How often should you check or maintain your irrigation system? It’s more important to know what you’re looking for as opposed to how often you are looking. Leaking seals along basepaths are more critical than a leaking seal in the outfield because of the amount of traffic around that head. A good guide is late April/ early May at the startup, June 15 before it gets hot, and beginning of August to see how you’re doing. What’s the best way to troubleshoot an irrigation system? Start at the controller or water source and work from there to your problem. Then think about what has happened since things last worked well. An example would be a valve that isn’t responding. Do the other valves in that area respond? Isolating where you should be looking helps you find the problem faster. Also, it’s easy to feel stumped. Sometimes the best thing is to just run the zone for 30 minutes manually while you think about it
and try again the next day. Troubleshooting is easier in the right mindset. What is your opinion about little and often irrigation vs. deeper, more penetrating irrigation? I wish there was an answer that applied to everyone. There are fields that I have seen where irrigation is necessary every day and parks where the water shouldn’t come on until June or July. Try to develop an understanding of what it takes to go from a “little dry” to “not worried.” If this means running for 25 minutes and you are a little dry again two days later, than a decent program would be 25 minutes on full circles and 15 minutes on part circles every other day. Please explain the importance of closing down your irrigation systems correctly. Water has a tendency to break the most inconvenient items to fix when it freezes in an irrigation system. Winterizing your system correctly means getting out enough water so that if there is a freeze condition, it isn’t a problem. The best way to do this is in multiple, short (two-minute) intervals of pushing compressed air through the zones. The most efficient way to start is by purging the mainline meaning you try to blow air from one “end” and out of the other “end or ends”. In looped systems this is simply the point that is farthest away. With the mainline mostly dry, the winterization of individual zones goes faster and is a more reliable way to avoid damage. How often would you suggest carrying out an irrigation audit? I have audited one system in my life. Visual inspections and an understanding of what the equipment is designed to do is sufficient. What is the average lifespan of an irrigation system? We really don’t know. There are great PVC systems that have shown little to no signs of age, as well as recently installed systems that have failed. It’s really the vulnerability of the working parts. Dirty water puts more stress on plastic gears in rotors and rubber diaphragms in valves. What we are seeing is that sprinklers have a useful life and then wear out. This depends on so many things, but a well-built system from 30 years ago doesn’t go out of style and can be adapted using the most recent technology. •
Kyle McNerney
16 • New England BLADE • September 2021
