You have a sprinkler system. You still have a dry patch. It is in roughly the same place it was last August, and it has survived everything you have thrown at it.
The usual next move is to run the system longer. That rarely works, and it is worth understanding why before you spend a summer watering the sidewalk.
A dry patch is a coverage problem
Irrigation zones are designed to overlap. Each head is meant to throw far enough to reach the arc of the next one, so the weakest part of one head’s pattern is covered by the strength of another.
When something interrupts that overlap, a gap appears. The grass in the gap is not getting less water than it needs — it is getting almost none, while everything around it gets plenty.
Longer run times do not close the gap. They put more water on the parts that were already wet.
What usually turns out to be wrong
A head has tilted. Mowers, frost and foot traffic all move heads slightly off vertical over the years. A few degrees is enough to throw the arc somewhere other than where it was aimed.
A nozzle is partly clogged. Grit gets in and the throw shortens. The head still pops up and still sprays, which is why this one gets missed.
Something has grown. A shrub that was small when the system went in is now blocking an arc. This is the most common cause on properties more than a few years old, and the dry patch usually sits directly behind the planting.
Pressure has dropped. Every head in the zone throws shorter, and the gaps open up at the edges of each arc all at once.
A head is broken or sunk. It waters its own feet and nothing else.
The five-minute check you can do yourself
Run the zone that covers the dry patch and stand there watching it. Not from the window — out on the grass.
Look for:
- A head that is not popping up, or not popping up fully
- Spray landing on a driveway, path, wall or fence
- A head visibly aimed somewhere other than where it should be
- A fine mist rather than a throw, which usually means pressure
- Water pooling near one head while the ground further out stays dry
Most people find the cause in the first minute, because once you are looking at the zone running it tends to be obvious.
When it is worth calling
Call if you see any of these, because they get more expensive the longer they run:
- Heads that do not pop up at all
- A zone that does not come on
- Water pooling or a soft, permanently damp patch
- A sudden jump in the water bill with no schedule change
- Spray that has been watering hardscape for weeks
What a service visit should cover
A proper check runs every zone while somebody watches where the water actually lands. That means:
- Each zone run in turn and observed
- Heads and nozzles checked, cleaned or replaced
- Spray direction and arc reset where it has drifted
- Coverage checked for gaps and overlap
- Water pressure checked
- The controller programme reviewed for the season
The point is to find the cause rather than to sell a replacement.
“Do I need a new system?”
Usually not.
A system with a dry patch is generally a system with a fault in one zone. The diagnosis comes first, and on most properties the fix is a handful of parts and an hour of adjustment rather than a new install.
If a system genuinely is at the end of its life, that will be obvious from what we find — and we will tell you what it would take to put right either way.
