Of all the seasonal tasks on a Park City property, a sprinkler blowout is the one with the worst risk-to-cost ratio. The service itself is quick and inexpensive. Skipping it can mean cracked mainlines, split valves, and ruptured backflow assemblies — repairs that run into the hundreds or thousands and tear up your landscape to fix.
What a blowout actually does
Any water left in your irrigation lines over winter will freeze, expand, and crack whatever contains it. A blowout uses compressed air to push every drop of water out of the pipes, valves, and heads before the first hard freeze. Once the system is dry, freezing temperatures have nothing to damage.
Timing at 7,000 feet
This is where Park City differs from the valley. Our first hard freeze can arrive weeks earlier than down the canyon, and an early cold snap doesn't wait for the calendar. We target blowouts for late September into October, ahead of the overnight lows that dip into the 20s. Waiting until "it feels like winter" is often already too late.
Signs your system wasn't fully cleared
- Heads that don't pop up or spray weakly in spring.
- A zone that won't pressurize after startup.
- Visible cracks on the backflow assembly above ground.
Pair it with spring startup
The blowout in fall and a proper startup in spring are two halves of the same job. At startup we recharge the system slowly, check every zone, and catch any winter damage before it wastes water all summer. Putting both on a schedule means you never have to remember the timing — we do.
