We purchased a home on 1.4 acres of overgrown and neglected rocky hillside. The entire acreage has signs of irrigation, BUT a lot of it isn't working.

Yesterday a landscape/irrigation guy came to assess. It was really cool what he did. There are 12 stations controlling the irrigation, and we didn't know which controlled what.

He brought colored flags with him, turned on station one, and marked each drip and sprinkler that was working with orange flags. Within that network he discovered a major broken main PVC pipe, fixed it, and suddenly all is working within that station. Of course, we'll be capping off some of it, and adding some in different areas, but I loved the flags and the detective work!

He then went on to station 2, with purple flags, etc.

He discovered that some of it was plumbed wrong. Water travels easy down a hillside, but whoever plumbed it, had some lines traveling up, and those didn't have enough pressure. He is going to fix the major problems with all 12 stations this week. It is costing some money, but he's doing the major stuff. We can handle the small side drippers as we plant what we wish on that huge hill!

I was hoping the flag sprinkler detection method might help some of you!

Suzi