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High Water Bills

Thursday, January 31st, 2013

Have you received a higher than normal water bill this year? There may be a few reasons for this:

  1. Your city raised the water rates, check our blog for your local municipality’s 2012 water rates
  2. You may have a leak, it is easy to miss a small leak that is creating a soft spot in your yard.  Check your lawn for any excessively wet areas or soft spots and call us if you find something.
  3. Your system is overwatering your lawn. Check out some of our water saving devices or call us if to learn more. This article has some useful information about how to save water with cheap water saving devices.

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Zebra Mussels – Warning to Lake Customers

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

Zebra mussels have infested metro are lakes. While it is too early to know all of the effects this will have on using lake water for irrigation, this is what we do know. Not all lakes have the same rate of infestation, for information on your lake visit the MN DNR website. Zebra mussels will grow inside the suction filter in the lake. For areas with established populations we recommend a monthly external inspection and cleaning of the lake screen. In August an internal inspection and cleaning of the screen should be done, our observed muscle growth inside the lake screens in 2011 was much greater than what attaches on the outside of the screen. Specimens are needed to confirm sightings, in Minnesota, possession and transport of zebra mussels is illegal, except when providing them to the DNR for identification. Unauthorized introduction of zebra mussels, fish, or plants into the wild is illegal.

 

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Beware of the Low Cost Contractor (Part 2)

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

Continued from June 2nd post…

  1. Using the wrong head for the wrong area:  The side yard was watered using a typical cheap installation method.  The contractor used rotors to water the side yard instead of spray heads. This caused the garage to be hit by the sprinkler heads on one side of the yard.  The other side of the yard the house was being hit five or six weeks up the side of the house.  Big rotors can save labor but the can damage your house.
  2. Poor sprinkler head installation:  Heads were buried too high, too deep and crooked.  This evidence of poor, hasty installation.  One head was buried so deep it couldn’t pop up through the thatch and another was so high the lawn mower chopped the top off of the head.  This all resulted in a lot of wasted water and a dry lawn.
  3. Don’t worry about the property lines. While examining the sprinkler system it became obvious that the heads on the side of the property were not straight.   One line of heads seemed to have random placement and the other line of heads curved out from the property.  After finding the property stakes it became obvious that the sprinkler heads were not on the property. This is symptomatic of poor installation procedures.
  4. No plan or drawing the the sprinkler system:   An as-built drawing of the sprinkler system is important.  This property had eight zones and 5 zones were turned off at the controller.  When I turned them on it was obvious they had been cut.  The obvious culprit was a newly installed deck.  Without a drawing of how the sprinkler system it will be much harder and expensive to modify or fix.

After going through the system it was obvious the yard needed a new sprinkler system.   The system was very flawed and didn’t work and wasn’t even on the property.  My friend ended up going to his agent and getting a discount on the house.  It turned out okay for him but if he had owned the home it would have been a costly mistake.

I guess the old axioms hold true, you do get what you pay for and it is better to do it right the first time.   It is best to remember if the bid is too low it really is probably to good to be true.

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