Sprinkler Winterization and Freeze Damage Repair in DFW

Sprinkler winterization in DFW is not the same job it is further north, and that’s exactly why systems here break. North Texas irrigation is built with the backflow preventer above ground, sitting exposed in the open air. It is the single most freeze-vulnerable component on your property, it’s made of brass or cast iron, and water expanding inside it will crack the body.

We don’t get a predictable freeze-and-thaw season here. We get long mild stretches punctuated by hard freezes that arrive with about two days’ notice — which is why so many systems in the Metroplex are still running when the first one hits. February 2021 is the reference point most homeowners have, and the repair bills from that event are the reason this page exists.

What actually freezes and breaks

In order of how often we see it:

• The backflow preventer. Above grade, exposed, and full of water. A cracked body is the most common and most expensive freeze failure on a North Texas system.
• Exposed piping and risers. Anything above the frost line, especially where a line comes up a wall or out of a bed.
• The valve manifold. Shallow-buried valve boxes hold standing water, and the bonnets crack.
• Heads with water standing in them. Low-point heads don’t drain and the bodies split.
• The pressure vacuum breaker assembly. Bonnet and poppet damage from ice.

Sprinkler winterization before the first freeze

1. Shut off the irrigation water supply. Find the isolation valve on the irrigation line — often in a box near the meter or at the backflow device — and close it. This is the step that matters most.
2. Drain what holds water. Open the test cocks on the backflow preventer and any manual drain valves at the system’s low points, and let them empty.
3. Insulate the backflow preventer. An insulated pouch, or pipe wrap plus a bag. Don’t seal it airtight against the ground, and don’t leave it wet inside.
4. Set the controller to off or rain mode. Off stops the schedule. On most controllers, rain mode keeps the clock and programming so you don’t have to rebuild it in March.
5. Check the freeze sensor, if you have one. They fail silently. If you can’t remember one ever stopping a cycle, assume it’s dead.

If any of that is unclear on your particular system — and it often is on systems that have been modified over the years — a winterization visit takes under an hour and we’ll label the shutoff so next year is a two-minute job.

Why switching the controller off isn’t enough

This is the single most common and most expensive misunderstanding about sprinkler winterization in DFW.

Turning the controller off stops the system from running. It does nothing about the water already sitting in the backflow preventer, the mainline, the valve manifold and the heads. That water is what freezes, expands and cracks brass. A system that never ran all winter can still be destroyed in one night by a hard freeze, and most of the freeze damage we repair every year is on systems whose owners correctly turned the controller off and reasonably assumed they were done.

The water has to be shut off and drained. The controller is the last step, not the only one.

Freeze sensors

A freeze sensor interrupts the cycle when the temperature drops near freezing, which stops your system from icing a sidewalk at 4 a.m. and stops a scheduled run from pushing water into pipes that are already frozen.

Fort Worth requires rain and freeze sensors on every system installed on or after June 1, 2007, and on all commercial systems. In practice, a large share of the DFW systems we inspect either never had one or have one that stopped working years ago and was never noticed, because a sensor that fails does so quietly — nothing changes until the night it was supposed to act.

If it already froze

Written for someone standing in the yard looking at it right now.

1. Shut the water off. At the irrigation isolation valve if you can find it, at the main meter if you can’t. A cracked backflow preventer will run continuously once things thaw.
2. Look at the backflow device. A split along the body, a bulging bonnet, or water weeping from a seam means the body is cracked. It needs replacing, not tightening.
3. Don’t run the system to “test” it. If there’s a break downstream you’ll flood the yard or undermine a slab before you find it.
4. Don’t thaw it with a torch or heat gun. Brass and PVC both fail badly under direct flame, and you’ll turn a repair into a replacement.
5. Photograph it before anything is touched. If you’re making a homeowner’s insurance claim, that documentation matters.
6. Call. 972-786-6736. The week after a hard freeze is our busiest of the year, and earlier calls get earlier windows.

What freeze repairs cost

It depends entirely on what cracked. A split lateral and a burst backflow preventer are different jobs. Estimates are free, there is no trip charge, and you are told what failed and what it will take before anything is replaced.

The week after a hard freeze is the busiest of our year, and our pricing that week is the same as any other week. Call 972-786-6736 and we will walk it with you.

Freeze damage is where people get overcharged, because it is urgent and the customer is rattled. Billing actual time rather than a panic number is most of the protection. The rest is simple arithmetic: a winterization visit takes well under the hours a cracked backflow preventer costs to replace.

Spring start-up

When you bring the system back up in March, do it deliberately. Charge the lines slowly to avoid a pressure surge, run every zone, and walk the property watching for new wet spots — freeze damage underground often doesn’t show itself until the system is pressurized again. We do start-ups with a written zone-by-zone report and reset the schedule for your city’s assigned watering days.

Frequently asked questions