Irrigation Installation

What a professional install includes

1. The head station. The filter, valves, pump and (where specified) regulators and fertigation installed as one assembly — positioned where it's serviceable, with the gauge points, the flush provision and the check/anti-siphon where the source is protected. The head is where the system is either alive or leaking, and it's the part that gets done properly or not at all.
2. The mainline. Laid to the design route — buried or bedded as specified, joined correctly (compression torqued to spec, or fusion where the design calls for it), with the zone take-offs at each block, labelled.
3. The zones and drip lines. Laid to the specification — line count per bed/row/tree, emitter spacing, flush points at every line end, caps where there are no flush points. The drip lines run straight, level where possible, clear of stones and traffic.
4. The wiring (where automated). Solenoid wiring run with the pipework, labelled at both ends, the controller installed where it's protected and reachable.
5. The test. Every zone pressure-tested — at the head and at the far end — before handover. A zone that isn't tested is a zone that leaks in week three, and a system that's tested at install is a system whose "leaks" start as new events, not inherited ones.
6. The handover. The as-built document (the map, the zone table, the material schedule), the start-up settings on the controller, the irrigation schedule for your crop, and the maintenance calendar. The paper is part of the install — it's what makes the next season's work easy.

Why "laid and connected" isn't enough

The failure modes of a careless install are all cheap to prevent and expensive to find later: a compression joint under-tightened (a leak in a month), a pipe cut at an angle (a seat that never seals), a mainline undersized to save the quote (a field that's always a little dry at the end), a flush point forgotten (a line that blocks from the inside out). None of them is visible when the system is "done" — all of them are visible in the season. The test step exists because it's the only step where the system has to prove itself before the crop does.

That's the standard our installs run to, and it's the standard we apply when we take over an existing system for repair or upgrade — the work that was never tested gets tested when it's opened up.

Timelines

Windows assume standard access and terrain — the site assessment sets the real timeline, and an in-ground crop changes the sequence (we work around the standing crop, which adds days).

Installation on existing farms

Most installs aren't on empty fields. The pattern for an existing farm: the assessment maps what's there (the crop, the existing pipes, the water source's real behaviour), the design is built to fit the working farm, and the install is sequenced around the production — blocks installed in the order the farm can spare them, zones commissioned one at a time so the running crop is never without water for more than a working day. It's the same standard, sequenced differently.

What you should check at handover

• Every zone runs at the design pressure — at the head and at the far end (the far end is the number that matters).
• Every drip line flushes — the flush points work, and the water coming out is clear.
• The filter is clean, the gauges read, the pump runs without cavitation noise.
• The document is real — the map matches the ground, the zone table matches the valves, the material schedule matches what's in the box.
• The schedule is set — the controller knows your crop's starting run times, or the manual schedule is written down where the operator will find it.

Any of those missing, the install isn't finished — say so, and it gets done. That's the handover standard, and it's the reason the maintenance program that follows starts from a system that actually performs.