Best Sprinkler & Irrigation Contractors in Belleville, ON

In Ontario, yes, and it's a legal duty rather than a courtesy. Ontario One Call handles locate requests for free, and you have to ask at least five business days before digging on a single property. Sprinkler trenches are shallow, but cables and gas lines can run close to the surface. Most other provinces have their own locate services. Ask your contractor who books the locates, and wait for the paint marks.

It keeps water sitting in your irrigation pipes, among soil and fertilizer, from being pulled back into the drinking supply. The rules come from your local water utility. Calgary, for instance, requires a test each time the system is turned on for the season, done by a tester registered with the city, who then sends in the report. Ask whether your municipality runs a similar program before the first startup.

Look at the heads before blaming the controller. Frost can tilt a head over the winter, and a plough or lawn mower can knock one sideways. Sod also creeps over heads that sit too low. If every head on one zone throws short, that zone has too many heads for the water pressure, or there's a leak upstream. Run each zone by hand and walk it while it waters.

Anywhere the ground freezes, which is most of Canada, yes. Water left in pipes, valves and the backflow device expands as it freezes and cracks them, and you find out at startup. A proper blowout clears each zone with compressed air at a gentle pressure that spares the heads. Book it early in the fall, because every crew in town is chasing the same frost.

For beds, hedges and pots, yes, and some local rules favour it. Metro Vancouver's usual lawn watering rules put no set hours on true drip irrigation, though micro-sprays don't count as drip there. Drip needs a pressure regulator and a filter, and a blocked emitter gives no warning. It gets blown out in the fall with everything else. Lawns stay on sprinklers.