Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 through November 30, and it peaks around September 10. Central Florida sits far enough inland that storm surge is not our problem, but everything else that comes with a named storm reaches us. Sustained winds, torrential rain, spin-off tornadoes from the outer bands, and lightning strikes that can take out a controller from half a mile away. All of it puts stress on irrigation systems, and many of the calls we get in September and October are storm-related.
The Damage We See Every Season
Storm damage to a sprinkler system usually includes heads hit by falling limbs, rain sensors torn off eaves or gutters when the gutter fails, and valve boxes filled with mud and debris that clog the small ports inside solenoids. That last one is why a system can work right after a storm and then fail intermittently for weeks afterward. When a large tree uproots and the root ball lifts a section of yard, underground pipes and wires get pulled with it.
Then there is lightning. A direct hit is rare. A nearby strike sending a surge through the underground wiring is not. That surge is the most common cause of a controller that will not power on after a storm, or a system where one or two specific zones stop responding while the rest keep working.
Extended power outages create a separate issue. Most residential controllers have a small backup battery, but that battery only protects the time and program settings. It does not run the system. Some controllers resume their schedule cleanly once power returns. Others lose programming entirely and need to be reset. A controller with a dead backup battery, which describes most of them after ten years, will always need reprogramming after a long outage. That is the one scenario where you can end up with a watering-restriction violation from a storm. If the reset schedule waters on a day your address is not permitted, the water district can fine you. If your programming survived the outage and you water on your normal day, restrictions have not changed and you are fine.
What You Should Do Before the Storm
Two things.
Shut off the water supply to the irrigation system at the ball valve near the backflow preventer. If a head or pipe gets broken during the storm, no water flows until you turn it back on. That prevents hundreds of gallons of waste from broken components still under pressure.
Put the controller into its "off" or "rain" mode. That prevents scheduled cycles from running while the yard is saturated. Do not unplug the controller from the wall. You are trying to prevent watering, not protect the electronics.
What We Do After
The diagnostic and repair work is what we are for. Once the storm has passed and the yard has drained, we come out, cycle each zone, and identify what the storm actually did. Wire faults, dead solenoids, mud-clogged valves, broken heads, controller damage from a nearby strike, sensor failures. We find it and quote a flat-rate repair on the spot, before starting work. Quotes are given in person once we know what we are looking at, storm or not. We do the work that visit, because we carry parts for every major brand on the truck.
Storm season gives us more of one kind of call, but the diagnostic approach does not change from what we do the rest of the year. We have been doing it in Central Florida for more than fifty years. Call 407-774-6648 after the storm passes. We schedule quickly during storm season and we bring the parts we need on the first visit.