An in-ground, permanent irrigation system can save you a good deal of time and effort and minimizes the need for unattractive hoses and sprinkler attachments scattered across the yard. If you've just moved into a house and are unfamiliar with the location of sprinkler heads or cannot remember the exact design of a system even if you installed it yourself, you may need to search for the sprinkler heads. This is important to avoid damaging the system when performing routine lawn maintenance practices like core aeration and dethatching or if you are planning more intensive landscape renovation.
Flag any sprinklers that you can find or definitely know the location of with a certain color of wire flag stake.
Measure the distance between known sprinklers or rows of sprinklers and draw a diagram with these measurements. Drawing a diagram of the area that includes the positions of and spacing between known sprinkler heads may reveal a pattern. Sprinklers in irrigation systems are typically not installed randomly and are placed so the water is distributed uniformly.
Measure out and mark the suspected locations of any sprinkler heads based on your observations of the known sprinkler head locations. Use a different color flag than you used for the known sprinkler heads to mark these suspected sprinkler locations.
Turn on the irrigation system, if possible. If there are multiple parts of the system with separate valves, turn on water to just one part of the system at a time. Walk around the area where you suspect the sprinkler heads are and look for water from a sprinkler head. Listen for bubbling or gurgling, which typically indicates a hidden sprinkler head or leak. After leaving the system on for a while, the area around hidden or buried sprinkler heads will become soggy or develop puddles.
Pull a metal garden rake gently over the area of the grass where you suspect sprinkler heads are located if you cannot turn water on to the system. If the sprinkler heads are buried, you may need to apply greater pressure to the rake so it digs slightly into the soil.
Things You Will Need
- Wire flag stakes or surveyor's flags
- Measuring tape
- Metal garden rake
- Metal detector (optional)
- Cutting the grass as low as possible without damaging the sprinkler heads, basing your mowing height on the height of the sprinkler heads you can find, may help you to find hidden sprinkler heads.
- If you cannot supply the system with water or suspect a break in irrigation tubing, the easiest way to find the hidden sprinkler heads may be to rent or borrow a metal detector, which may detect the small quantity of metal most sprinkler heads contain.
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