Craft
Working Around Irrigation, Utilities and an Established Lawn
Sprinkler zones, invisible fence, buried services and a lawn somebody has spent years on. What gets located first, what gets moved, and what realistically gets repaired.
On an empty lot this chapter does not exist. On an established suburban property it is a genuine part of the job, and it is the source of most of the unpleasant surprises we hear about from people describing a previous contractor.
What has to be found before a machine moves
- Public utilities. A locate request is free and non-negotiable. It marks gas, electric, water, telecoms.
- Private lines. Locates do not cover what runs from your house to your own shed, lamp posts or garage. Nobody knows those exist except you.
- Irrigation. Heads are visible; the pipe runs and the valve boxes are the question, and the as-built drawing is usually long gone.
- Invisible fence. Shallow, unmarked, easily cut, and the cut is not obvious until the dog finds the gap.
- Downspout drainage. Buried lines carrying roof water often run exactly where a patio wants to go.
Irrigation: capped, moved or reworked
A head inside the new patio footprint has three possible fates. It can be capped, which is cheapest and leaves that part of the zone unwatered - fine if it is now under paving. It can be relocated, which means a new pipe run and a working head at the patio edge. Or the zone can be reworked, which is the honest answer when a patio cuts a zone in half and leaves the remainder watering unevenly.
Agree which one before work starts. The unhappy version is discovering in July that a third of the lawn is not being watered because a head was capped and nobody mentioned it.
Be realistic about the lawn
Machinery has to reach the back yard, and it will run over turf to get there. On clay, particularly when damp, that means compaction and ruts, not just flattened grass.
What is reasonable: a defined access route agreed in advance, boards or mats where practical, and repair as a written line on the quote - de-compaction, topsoil and seed or sod. What is not reasonable is a promise that nothing will be marked. Ask which route they intend to use and whether anything along it is at risk.
Trees are a special case
Excavation near a mature tree cuts roots, and the damage frequently does not show for two or three years - by which point nobody connects the two. If a tree matters to you, say so early. Sometimes the patio moves a few feet. Occasionally the honest advice is that the tree and the patio cannot both be where you want them.
What to do the week before
Walk the yard with whoever is doing the work and point at things: the invisible fence transmitter, the irrigation controller, the shed line you had run yourself, the tree you care about, the gate you would rather they did not take off. Ten minutes of that prevents most of what goes wrong on established properties.