Brooklyn Park Warns Against Leaky Sprinklers

In the land of sky blue waters, lakes and rivers are everywhere.  But that doesn’t mean Minnesota has an endless supply of water.

“Water is our number one resource,” said Dan Ruiz, Brooklyn Park’s Director of Operations and Maintenance. “We can’t take it for granted.”

In a Brooklyn Park survey, 75 percent of residents with lawn irrigation systems had at least one leaky sprinkler head.

“My first response to that survey was  if something’s leaking, please fix it,” Ruiz said.

Most of us want an emerald green lawn for neighborhood curb appeal. That’s why checking your sprinklers often is a good thing.

No one should be watering their driveway or the street.

“They should check each zone and see which ones are working and which ones are not working,” Ruiz said. “Things break. With the ice in the winter, things shift. If the sprinkler heads are near the street a snowplow might get them.”

Fixing a faulty irrigation system makes sense. If you don’t it can be costly.

“That adds up to hundreds, if not thousands of gallons of water,” Ruiz said. “That’s real money to homeowners.”

If you need to replace sprinkler heads it is not expensive. Costs typically range from $3 to $7 apiece.

Brooklyn Park sits on an old sand plain. Watering grass in parts of the city is tricky.

“The majority of town has a lot of sandy soils which suck up the water even faster,” Ruiz said. “So all the more reason to be aware of what water you are using.”

The best time to water your lawn is in the early morning hours – sometime between 4 and 10 am.

“That guarantees that more water gets into the ground,” Ruiz said. “If you do it after 10 into the noon, and 2, and 4 o’clock hour, your losing 50 to 70 percent of that water to evaporation.”