Irrigation Services Sydney

It is quoted rather than published, because the number comes from the design: how many zones the garden needs, how much of it is drip versus sprinkler, how far the mainline has to run, whether trenching goes through open ground or an established garden, and whether backflow prevention has to be added at the tap. A couple of drip zones on beds in a courtyard is a modest job. A full system across lawn, beds, pots and a vegetable garden with a smart controller is a much bigger one. You get an itemised quote, and it is easy to stage — put the mainline and valves in now, add zones later.

Yes. Sydney Water's water wise rules apply all year rather than only in drought, and they cover things like watering outside the middle of the day, fitting a trigger nozzle to hoses, and not hosing down hard surfaces. They tighten further when restrictions come in, and the detail does change, so check the current rules on the Sydney Water site. We set controllers to run early morning as standard, which keeps you compliant and is also the most efficient time to water.

Any irrigation system connected to the mains needs a backflow prevention device, so that water sitting in garden pipes cannot be siphoned back into the drinking supply if pressure drops. That connection is plumbing work and is done by a licensed plumber — we arrange it as part of the job. Some device types also need periodic testing. It is not an upsell; it is the part a cheap install skips.

Both, on different zones. Garden beds, hedges, vegetable beds and pots get drip, because it puts water on the soil under the mulch where nearly all of it is used. Open lawn gets sprinklers, because you cannot practically drip-irrigate turf you walk on, other than with subsurface dripline in a new build. The mistake is using one method for the whole garden.

If it is zoned and scheduled properly, yes — usually substantially, because water goes where it is needed and stops going where it is not. If it is one zone on a fixed timer that nobody ever adjusts, it can easily use more than hand watering. That is why we set season schedules, fit rain sensors and come back to re-tune rather than just installing hardware and leaving.

There is no universal number, which is why we do a catch test: put straight-sided containers out, run the zone, and measure what actually lands. As a shape, lawn wants a deep soak once or twice a week rather than a daily sprinkle, shaded beds want roughly half what the lawn gets, a hot west-facing strip wants the most, and pots want a short run every day in summer. Everything roughly halves between January and June.

Yes, and it is a good pairing for drip in particular, which needs very little pressure. A tank generally needs a pump to give consistent pressure, and filtration matters more than on mains because tank water carries more sediment. We can also set it to fall back to mains when the tank runs low, so the garden is not relying on a dry tank in February.

For most gardens, a decent controller with a rain sensor gets you the bulk of the benefit. Weather-linked and app-based controllers are genuinely useful if you travel, if the garden has many zones, or if you will never remember to change the schedule between seasons — which is most people. What they cannot do is fix a bad zone layout, and no controller compensates for a garden split into the wrong zones.

Yes, and most of what we install is exactly that. Dripline can be run through existing beds and pinned under the mulch with very little disturbance. The trenching for the mainline is the part that needs care, so we hand-dig near established root systems and route around trees rather than through them. It takes longer than a bare-site install and it is far cheaper than replacing plants.

Run each zone manually and walk it while it runs. You are looking for dry gaps between sprinkler heads, heads that have sunk below the turf or been knocked sideways, water misting rather than falling in droplets, run-off onto paths, and beds that are still dry a hand's depth down after a full cycle. If a drip zone looks fine but the plants on it are struggling, suspect a blocked filter or emitters.

Yes, that is a large part of this work. We will test the zones, find the fault and tell you honestly whether it is a repair or whether the original design was never going to work. Replacing a controller, a solenoid or a run of dripline is common; recommending a full replacement is not, and we would rather fix what is there.

All of them — the North Shore, Northern Beaches, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, CBD, Western Sydney, the Hills District and Southern Sydney. The exposed western suburbs and the hot courtyard blocks closer in are where systems make the biggest difference.