Intake Forms for Irrigation Companies: Zone Maps, Controller Types, and Winterization

By Daniel Akselrod · July 2026

Your tech pulls up to a property to troubleshoot a dry spot in the front yard. The homeowner says zone 3 isn’t working. The tech opens the controller and it’s a 15-year-old Hunter Pro-C with no zone labels. Nobody knows what zone 3 covers. The homeowner doesn’t have a zone map. The original installer went out of business a decade ago. So the tech spends forty minutes running each zone manually, walking the yard, and mapping the system by hand before addressing the actual problem — which turns out to be a cracked lateral line that took ten minutes to fix.

That forty minutes of unbillable system mapping is what happens when intake captures nothing more than an address and “sprinkler not working.” A proper irrigation intake form captures the system documentation, the water source characteristics, the controller setup, and the service history before your technician ever opens the valve box. Here is what should be on that form and why each field matters.

System documentation: what’s in the ground

An irrigation system is buried infrastructure. Unlike a furnace or a water heater that you can see and inspect from the doorway, an irrigation system is pipe, wire, and valves under several inches of soil. The more your team knows about what’s down there before arriving, the less time they spend discovering it on site.

Zone count is the starting point. A 6-zone residential system is a fundamentally different job than a 24-zone commercial property. The zone count tells your tech how long the diagnostic will take, how many valve boxes to locate, and how much replacement inventory to carry. Ask the homeowner how many zones the system has. If they don’t know, ask them to count the number of stations programmed on the controller — that number is visible on the display of any digital controller without needing to know anything technical.

Head types matter for parts loading. A system running all Rainbird 5000 rotors needs a different nozzle and body inventory than one with Hunter MP Rotator heads on every zone. Ask whether the system uses pop-up spray heads (short range, fixed pattern), rotors (long range, rotating stream), drip emitters, bubblers, or a mix. Most residential systems combine sprays in small beds and rotors on larger turf areas.

Pipe material affects repair approach. Older systems in the Northeast often use polyethylene pipe (black poly) with barbed insert fittings and clamps. Systems in the South and West are predominantly PVC with solvent-welded fittings. Your tech needs different repair kits for each. If the homeowner knows the pipe type or remembers seeing black flexible pipe versus rigid white pipe during a previous repair, capture that.

Water pressure is the hydraulic foundation. Static pressure at the point of connection — measured in PSI at the hose bib nearest the meter — determines how many heads can run per zone and what precipitation rate the system can deliver. Low pressure (below 35 PSI) means pressure regulation and head selection are constrained. High pressure (above 80 PSI) means a pressure regulator is mandatory to prevent misting and premature component wear. Ask if the customer has ever measured their water pressure. Many have a gauge from a big-box store and can give you a number that saves your tech from starting the site visit with a pressure test.

Controller type: timer, digital, or smart

The controller is the brain of the system, and knowing what type the customer has tells you a lot about the system’s age, capabilities, and upgrade potential.

Mechanical timers are relics. They use rotating pins to set watering days and a dial for run time. They’re inaccurate, they can’t do cycle-and-soak programming, and they have no rain sensor input. If the customer has one, your intake form has just identified an upgrade opportunity before the truck even rolls.

Digital controllers from Hunter, Rain Bird, Irritrol, and Toro are the standard installed base. They offer multiple programs, flexible scheduling, and rain sensor connections. Most residential systems installed in the last 20 years have one. Your intake should capture the brand and model — a Hunter Pro-C is expandable with plug-in modules; a Rain Bird ESP-Me is expandable with snap-in modules; a cheap off-brand controller from a home center may not be expandable at all. That distinction matters if the customer wants to add zones.

Smart WiFi controllers — Rachio, Hunter Hydrawise, Rain Bird ESP-TM2 with LNK module, Orbit B-hyve — connect to the internet, pull local weather data, and adjust watering schedules automatically based on evapotranspiration calculations. If the customer already has one, your tech can often access the system remotely through the manufacturer’s app before arriving on site to review the zone setup, run times, and any error codes. If the customer doesn’t have one and is interested in water savings, the intake form is where you plant that seed. Smart controllers reduce water use by 20–50% compared to fixed schedules, and the upgrade is a $200–400 job that takes 30 minutes to install.

Water source: municipal, well, or reclaimed

Municipal water is straightforward: metered, treated, and pressurized by the utility. The main variables are pressure, flow rate, and meter size. A 5/8-inch meter on a half-acre property is going to constrain the system to small zones with limited heads per zone. A 1-inch meter gives you significantly more flow to work with.

Well water adds complexity. The well pump’s rated GPM, the well’s recovery rate, and the pressure tank size all affect how many zones can run consecutively and how long each zone can run before the pump needs to recover. A well that delivers 6 GPM continuously can run a zone with 4 rotors at 1.5 GPM each, but if the well’s recovery rate drops after 20 minutes of continuous pumping, your tech needs to program rest cycles between zones. Iron content in well water is another factor — high iron causes orange staining on siding, driveways, and concrete. If the customer’s well water stains, that’s relevant before your system starts spraying it across the front of their white house.

Reclaimed water (recycled wastewater treated to non-potable standards) is increasingly common in water-scarce regions. Reclaimed systems have strict regulatory requirements: purple pipe identification, dedicated backflow prevention, signage, and cross-connection prevention. Your intake must capture whether the property uses or has access to reclaimed water so your design complies with local health department regulations. The overlap with landscaping intake is significant here — plant selection and irrigation design are intertwined when the water source changes the chemistry of what’s being applied.

Backflow preventer testing and compliance

Every irrigation system connected to a potable water supply requires a backflow prevention device. The specific type — PVB (pressure vacuum breaker), RPZ (reduced pressure zone assembly), DCVA (double check valve assembly), or AVB (atmospheric vacuum breaker) — depends on the local code and the installation configuration. Most jurisdictions require annual testing by a certified backflow tester, with the test report filed with the water district.

Your intake form should capture whether the property has a backflow device, what type it is, and when it was last tested. An untested backflow device is a code compliance issue that your company may be obligated to report or remediate before performing other work on the system. Many irrigation companies bundle backflow testing with spring startup as a convenience to the customer and a recurring revenue line for the business. If the device hasn’t been tested in three years, that’s a conversation your tech should have on-site — but knowing about it before arrival lets them bring the test kit and the paperwork.

Winterization history and freeze damage

In any climate where ground temperatures drop below freezing, irrigation systems must be winterized — typically by blowing compressed air through each zone to evacuate the water from the pipes, heads, and valves. A system that was not winterized, or was winterized incompletely, is at risk for cracked pipes, split valve bodies, and blown head cases.

Your intake form should ask when the system was last winterized, who performed it, and whether the customer noticed any issues at spring startup (zones that won’t pressurize, water pooling in unexpected areas, heads that spin but don’t retract). A system that has gone two winters without a blowout almost certainly has at least one cracked component that will reveal itself under pressure at startup. Knowing the winterization history before the site visit lets your tech bring extra repair inventory and schedule adequate time for what will likely be a repair visit disguised as a startup.

Coverage gaps, dry spots, and sensor integration

Most customers call because something isn’t working right, and the most common complaint after “a zone won’t turn on” is “there are dry spots in the lawn.” Dry spots can result from poor head spacing (too far apart for adequate overlap), clogged nozzles, low pressure, blocked spray patterns (vegetation that’s grown up around a head), or soil conditions that prevent water from penetrating in certain areas. Your intake form should ask the customer to describe where the dry spots are — front yard, back yard, along the driveway, under the trees — so your tech can focus the inspection on those zones first.

Rain sensors and soil moisture sensors are efficiency add-ons that prevent the system from running when it doesn’t need to. A rain sensor mounted on the fascia board detects precipitation and interrupts the controller. A soil moisture sensor buried in the root zone measures actual soil moisture and allows watering only when the soil has dried to a threshold level. Your intake should ask whether the system has either device and whether it’s functional. A disconnected rain sensor is one of the most common findings on service calls — the homeowner bypassed it because it was preventing the system from running on cloudy days and they didn’t understand what it was doing.

New install vs. retrofit vs. repair: scoping the job correctly

These are three fundamentally different engagements, and your intake form should route them into different workflows. A new installation requires a full site survey, hydraulic design, permit application, and scheduling that accounts for trenching — you’re looking at a multi-day project. A retrofit — adding zones, converting spray to drip, upgrading the controller — starts with an assessment of the existing system and builds on what’s already in the ground. A repair is diagnostic and fix — usually a same-day or next-day service call.

Mixing these up at intake causes scheduling problems. A new install booked into a repair slot blocks your tech for the day. A repair booked as a “consultation” leads to a frustrated customer who expected their sprinkler to be fixed today, not assessed for a future appointment. Your intake form should present these as distinct service categories and route them accordingly. Browse the full form catalog to see how professional intake documentation handles this kind of service-type branching across every trade.