Sprinkler repairs, installations and system check-ups run by Elijah Washington, TCEQ licensed irrigator LI0029636. Rated 5.0 by 74 homeowners.
Homeowners search for sprinkler repair. Contractors say irrigation. It is the same system, and we use both words because you should be able to find us either way.
Here is the part most people in this market do not know: in Texas, irrigation work is regulated. Under the TCEQ rules, a person who designs, installs, maintains, alters, repairs or services a landscape irrigation system for compensation has to hold a licence, and a company doing that work has to have a licensed irrigator in charge. Ours is Elijah Washington, licence number LI0029636.
That is not a marketing badge. It means somebody the state has tested is responsible for what happens to the pipe that is connected to your drinking water. A lot of sprinkler work sold in San Antonio and Boerne is done by crews with no licence at all, usually as an add-on to mowing. When that work is done wrong, the failure modes are a backflow device that is not protecting your potable supply, a zone that has been quietly running twice as long as it should for two years, or a repair that leaves you outside the rules your city can fine you under.
Most homeowners have never been told any of this. It is all in the TCEQ landscape irrigation rules, and it is worth knowing before you hire anyone.
Any irrigation system connected to a potable water supply has to have an approved backflow prevention assembly, and it has to be tested when it is installed, before the system goes into service. Which type you need depends on the system: a pressure vacuum breaker, a reduced pressure principle assembly, or an air gap where chemicals are injected.
Required on every new system with an automatic controller, and also required whenever an automatic controller is replaced. So if someone swaps your dead controller for a new one and does not add or reconnect a rain sensor, that installation does not meet the rule. This one gets missed constantly.
On new systems, pop-up spray and rotary heads have to sit at least 4 inches back from a hardscape edge. It is a small rule with a real purpose: it is why some yards water the driveway and some do not.
A new installation comes with an irrigation plan carrying the irrigator seal and signature, showing zones, flow, component locations and design pressure. The irrigator has to keep a copy for three years. You are also owed a written warranty and a maintenance checklist stating the system was installed in accordance with state and local law. If you had a system put in and never received these, you did not get what the rule requires.
One fair exception: you do not need a licence to work on the system at your own home. If you are doing it yourself, you are exempt from the licensing rule, though the rain sensor and isolation valve requirements still apply and your city may still want a permit.
The classic symptom is one zone that keeps weeping after the cycle ends, or a wet patch that never dries. Usually a diaphragm or a bit of grit in the valve seat. We dig up the box, rebuild or replace the valve, and check the rest of the manifold while it is open.
Mowers, trucks and time. A head that has sunk an inch below grade sprays into the grass in front of it and leaves a dry ring beyond. A cracked riser floods one spot and starves the zone. We replace the head, reset it to grade, and match the nozzle to the rest of the zone so the precipitation rate stays even.
Dead controllers, a zone that will not fire, a zone that fires on its own. Often a burned solenoid or a nicked common wire rather than the controller itself, so we test before we sell you a new one. If the controller genuinely needs replacing, the rain sensor requirement is triggered and we handle that at the same time.
The expensive one. Water running when nothing is scheduled, a soft spot in the yard, or a water bill that jumps by hundreds. We isolate, dig, repair the line and backfill. On rock lots this takes longer, and we say so up front.
Failed check valves, freeze damage, or an assembly that was never tested. This is the piece of your system that protects the water you drink, so it is not a place to improvise.
Some systems were never right. Two heads that do not quite meet, a zone laid out for a flower bed that is now lawn, spray heads and rotors mixed on one zone so half the yard is drowning while the other half burns. This is a design fix, not a repair, and it is the most satisfying call we get.
Under a one day a week schedule, a bed watered by spray heads is being asked to do something it cannot do. Spray loses a large share to evaporation and wind, it throws water onto fences and walkways, and it wets foliage in a climate where that invites disease.
Converting bed zones to drip puts the water at the root, at a rate the soil can actually take up, which matters over caliche where anything applied fast just runs. It also usually means the bed zone can run longer without runoff, which is the only way to get a deep soak inside a four hour window.
On controllers, a smart controller is worth it here for one specific reason: it can be set to your assigned watering day and then adjust run time to the weather within that day, instead of running the same eight minutes in April and August. Combined with the rain sensor the rules already require, it stops the two most common wastes we see, which are watering after rain and watering for a season that ended two months ago.
We are happy to program whatever controller you already own rather than sell you a new one. Most of the systems we are called to look at do not need new equipment. They need somebody to set them correctly for the address they are at.
The check we recommend is in early spring, before the first hot stretch, and it takes about an hour on a typical residential system. We run every zone while somebody watches it, and we look for the same list every time: heads that are buried, tilted, blocked by a shrub that has grown or spraying the fence; nozzles that no longer match the zone; pressure that is too high, which shows up as misting rather than droplets and can waste a third of what you are paying for; leaks at valves and risers; the rain sensor, which frequently turns out to be disconnected; and the controller schedule against your current watering day and drought stage.
You get a written summary of what we found and what it will cost to fix, and you are free to fix none of it. Most spring check-ups find two or three small things. Finding them in March is a great deal cheaper than finding them in the August bill.
Typical ranges for this market, not a quote. Most repairs are diagnosed and finished in one visit.
New system installation is priced by the zone. A typical quarter acre residential yard runs 5 to 8 zones once beds and lawn are separated properly, and the cost per zone moves with head type, trenching conditions and whether we are cutting through limestone. Rock is the single biggest variable on a Hill Country install, and we would rather walk your yard and tell you than publish a number that is wrong for your lot.
Usually a valve that is not closing fully, a mainline leak underground, or a controller running a program you did not know about. Two of those three are invisible from the surface. Turn the system off at the controller for a day and watch the meter with everything in the house off. If it is still moving, the leak is on the irrigation side.
For work done for compensation on someone else’s system, yes, that is what the TCEQ rules require. You are free to work on your own system at your own home.
Once a year, in early spring. Systems drift. Heads sink, shrubs grow, pressure changes and rain sensors get disconnected.
Yes, and we do it on every visit. Both SAWS and the City of Boerne assign your day by the last digit of your street address, and the allowed hours change with the drought stage. We set the controller to your address and your current stage and write it down for you.
Yes. On all new systems with an automatic controller, and on every controller replacement. If your controller was swapped and no sensor was added or reconnected, that job was not finished.
If your beds are on spray heads, almost certainly. You lose less to evaporation and wind, you can run longer without runoff, and under a one day a week schedule that is the only way to get water deep enough to matter.
Yes. Most of what we repair, we did not install.
Yes, designed and sealed by our licensed irrigator, with the plan, warranty and maintenance checklist the rules require.
Coverage gets checked over every new lawn we lay.
A leak is one reason a yard stays wet. Grade is the other.
Drip, decomposed granite and plants that live on one day a week.
No charge and no salesperson. Someone comes out, looks at the yard, and tells you what it needs. We work in Boerne, Fair Oaks Ranch, Helotes and northwest San Antonio, Monday to Friday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
28991 IH-10 W, Suite 104, Boerne, TX 78006
travislandscapingtx@gmail.com
