The Basics · Irrigation
Water,
on purpose.
Water is the most valuable thing that ever touches a property. We are stewards of this ground before we are contractors on it — so the goal is exactly what the plants need, and not one gallon past it. Zones audited in person, and the whole system watched remotely all year.
The Premise
Water is precious.
Irrigation is the application of the most valuable thing that ever touches a property. Not the stone, not the steel, not the plants. Water. Every setting on a controller is a decision about how much of it comes out of the ground, and where it ends up.
We are stewards of this ground before we are contractors on it. The goal is not a wet yard. The goal is exactly what the plants need and not one gallon past it. Deep and infrequent, so roots drive down instead of holding at the surface. Skipped when it rains. Geared down the week the season turns.
That is hard, because irrigation is the only system on a property that runs unsupervised, in the dark, while everybody is asleep. A head sinks an inch and starts watering the fence. A nozzle clogs and a corner goes dry in April and nobody notices until July. The zone still comes on, so nothing looks broken — and the bill goes up while the plants go down, at the same time, for the same reason.
So we watch it. Every zone, in the yard, at both ends of the heat. And through Rachio and Sentinel Service, from the studio, all year.
The Craft
It is not rocket science. It is hydraulics.
Irrigation is simple to describe. Move water from the source to exactly where you want it — to the roots, into the plants, into the grass we already take care of. Point A to point B, the most efficient way available.
The work is not in describing it. The work is in reading a system somebody else built: the wiring, the valves, the pressure, the basic hydrology of how the thing was put together and why it was put together that way. That takes research, labor, and know-how. We have all three, and we fix things the right way the first time.
Wasting water wastes money. We are not in the business of either one.
Our crews carry full replacement parts and fittings, so a fault found on a Tuesday gets corrected on Tuesday rather than scheduled for the following week. And we can be as involved or as uninvolved as you want in the planning, the timing, and the watering itself — some clients hand us the whole property, some want a second set of eyes twice a year.
What We Do
Five jobs, one studio.
An audit is not a sales call. It is a man in the yard, zone by zone, writing down what is actually there — because that record is the starting point for everything after it.
Nothing gets fixed before it gets known.
We turn on each zone in turn and walk it. Heads that sank, heads that spray the drive, heads buried under three years of mulch, valves that weep, a mainline losing pressure it should not be losing. What comes out of that walk is the current state of the system, written down — and every decision after it comes off that page. What gets repaired. What gets integrated into the controller. What is worth upgrading. Where the water is going that nobody intended. You cannot make a system efficient that nobody has measured. You get told what is actually there before anybody talks about what it costs.
Curb to curb, and nothing else.
Coverage is two questions at once. Does the water reach everything that is planted, curb to curb — and does it stop there. Spray patterns overlap by design, so when one head drops below grade or a mower turns it, the overlap breaks and the far edge of that arc goes dry. That is the corner that browns first every year. The other half of that same misaligned arc is going onto the driveway, the pool deck, and the fence: water paid for, pumped, and thrown at concrete. One five-minute fix answers both, and people replace plants over it.
Azaleas and Texas sage do not want the same water.
An azalea is shallow-rooted and acid-loving and wants moisture it can count on. Texas sage wants to dry out between drinks and will rot if you keep its feet wet. Those two plants sit twelve feet apart in Houston beds all over this county, and on a single zone one of them always loses. Knowing which plant needs what water, and at what hour it needs it, is the part of this trade that has nothing to do with pipe. It is why we group zones by what the planting actually asks for instead of by what was convenient to trench.
Yours or ours, we know how to get the most out of it.
Most systems on the Gulf Coast run one program all year. In August that is barely enough, and in November it is a flooded bed and a water bill nobody can explain. It does not matter whose controller is on the wall — Hunter, Rain Bird, Toro, an old dial nobody has opened in a decade, or a Rachio we installed ourselves. We program all of them, and we set the parts most people never touch: run times that move with the season, cycles that soak in instead of running off, and a rain skip so a storm does not get watered. Deep and infrequent beats daily and shallow — it drives roots down instead of holding them at the surface. If it is a Rachio, we can do all of it from the studio without sending a truck. If it is not, we do it standing in your garage.
The system stops being an island.
A controller that knows nothing but a schedule is worth exactly what a schedule is worth. Tied into the rest of the property it becomes something else. Smart-home integration, so the water and the light answer the same app and the same voice as everything else in the house. A weather station on your ground, reading rain, wind, light, temperature and humidity where the yard actually is rather than at an airport nine miles away. Zone monitoring, so a break gets reported instead of discovered. Automatic fills, so a pond or a water feature that evaporates through August tops itself off without anybody dragging a hose. And upgrades we keep building as they become possible — the point of an open system is that next year it can do something it cannot do today.
The Two Windows
Twice a year, on purpose.
On our care programs the system gets looked at at both ends of the heat. Those are the two weeks that decide whether it costs you anything.
The spring start-up.
Charge the system, run every zone, replace what the winter broke, and program for the season ahead of the first hot spell. Doing this in March costs a visit. Discovering it in July costs the plants.
The gear-down and the freeze.
The controller comes down to winter run times as part of the fall cleanup, and the exposed side of the system gets prepared for a hard freeze. Houston gets one every few years and it takes out backflow assemblies and above-grade valves on the houses that were not ready.
The Watch
We watch everything.
You cannot steward what you are not watching. Scapes is an authorized Rachio Pro, every property we wire runs the same controller, and Sentinel Service puts eyes on the ground when you are not there. Between the two, a system that used to run blind gets watched every day of the year.
A dial on a wall, replaced by the phone in your pocket.
A beige box with a dial and a manual nobody kept is why systems run one program all year and waste water for eleven months of it. Rachio moves the clock onto the phone, watches the forecast, and skips the cycle when it rains — while you are out of town and would never have known. No subscription. And the same app now runs the landscape lighting, so the property is managed from one place instead of four. Why we standardize on it →
We can fix the schedule without driving to your house.
Rachio built shared access so you can hand somebody the controller without handing over your account. Four taps in the app and the studio can read the zones, correct the program, and set it for the season from here — no truck, no trip charge, no waiting on a route. You stay the owner, you see every change, and you can revoke it in the same screen. How to grant access →
Eyes on the property while you travel.
An app will tell you a zone ran. It will not tell you the head is spraying the driveway, or that the corner by the fence has been dry since the mower clipped a nozzle. That takes somebody standing there. Sentinel Service™ is boots on the ground on a schedule while you are gone — and paired with a controller we can reach from here, a problem gets seen and corrected in the same week instead of discovered in July. Sentinel Service™ →
The Promise
Only what
the ground needs.
Water is finite and it is not ours. A system that gets watched costs less to run, costs less to own, and takes less out of the aquifer than one nobody has touched since the house was built. Most of what we find is a sunken head, a turned nozzle, and a clock still set for a summer that ended years ago.
Begin
Use only what it needs.
Start with a zone audit. We walk the property, run every station, and put the current state of the system in writing — what works, what does not, and what it would take to fix. It is a paid visit, on purpose: nobody can honestly quote a repair on a system they have not read, and the written record belongs to you whether or not we do the work.
