Advanced Irrigation Blog Posts

Call in a Landscaping Company to Aid in Winterization

Posted by & filed under Landscaping.

With fall here and winter coming, it is unlikely that your landscaping is anywhere near the forefront of your mind. Isn’t landscaping something for the spring and summer? Should I really be worrying about which landscaping company to hire for my Minneapolis or greater Twin Cities area home at his point of the year? No and yes, respectively! Fall and winter are wonderful times to pursue some landscaping at your home, ensuring that your property remains aesthetically pleasing to all who gaze upon it during the cold months. We at Advanced Irrigation, a landscaping company that knows, have a few tips to offer you for your Minneapolis home:

Maybe you want to add trees that will look great regardless of the season? Opting for birch trees may be just what you need. During the winter that we face in the Twin Cities, these deciduous trees will indeed lose their leaves. The trunks and bark on the other hand will maintain a year-round color and texture in bark and on trunk, livening up your landscaping. Other options include crabapples and/or holly. Both boasting berries, these plants are colorful options that also feed the local fowl.

Evergreens are a prime choice for adding winter color. Do not let the name fool you as it does so many, green is just one of the colors these plants offer. You will find blues and yellows and a whole lot on the color palette in between. Going with evergreens can add a whole lot of color to your property during the oft-dreary, gray winter months of bitter cold.

Maybe your home brings with it hanging baskets or window boxes? Choose to plant things like broadleaf evergreens, holly and rhododendron. You could also fill these units with evergreen boughs which boast a wide palette of textures and colors. There represent a great way to enhance the look of your Minneapolis home. Maybe perennials are your thing? When the hour arrives to pick out perennials for your landscaping, choose the four season varieties such as hellebores and dianthus.

An additional means of enhancing your property is to call in a landscaping company to provide hardscaping to the existing landscape you have in place. Anything you can think of along these lines—garden sculptures, benches or a trellis—these will also enhance your winter landscaping.

If you have any questions about our landscaping company serving Minneapolis and the Twin Cities area, please call us at 612-599-8675 or reach out to us with a Service Request.

Utilize a Lawn Care Services Contractor to Get Those Sprinklers Winterized

Posted by & filed under Irrigation Systems, Lawn Care Services.

Winter weather is not far away. Right now is your when as per getting the ball rolling on the winterization of your irrigation system by a great, local lawn care services company. Buffalo and local area residents should call Advanced Irrigation to get on our schedule.

Why is it so important that a sprinkler system be prepared for winter? Why aren’t you able to merely turn off the water, leaving the system in a dormant state? Surely a sprinkler system can withstand winter!

You may feel free to take that chance. Water will be found at different points throughout the system that will freeze and expand as it metamorphoses into ice. With expansion on these levels, the system itself will be overwhelmed. It is far too much to ask of the lawn irrigation system’s myriad fittings, pipes, valves and other parts that could well be damaged beyond repair, calling for replacement. With this type of damage you will be left footing the bill for a replacement, come the warmer months of the year. Get a lawn services company out to your home that knows how to prep your irrigation system to withstand the annual deep freeze!

The winterization process tends to adhere to the same basic steps in moving from system to system, all being built up of the same relative component parts. The system will be drained using the automatic or manual drain valves to get most of the water out of the piping. Once this portion of the job is complete, compressed air in effect dries out the system, ensuring not a molecule of water is left within to freeze and damage the system. When we use compressed air, we calculate just the right amount to not damage the sprinkler system or any of their more delicate parts.

After the drying, we make sure the main valve is closed, keeping the water from flowing into the system and freezing when the temperatures get below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Any timers in existence will be turned off, preventing the system from starting up at any point during the winter months. All of that and your specific settings will not go away—they will be ready when called upon in the spring.

Fragile as they are to the winter, your irrigation system should have freeze and rain sensor installed within it, if operating without one. Outdoor temperatures and precipitation will be gauged. If you have not had our lawn care services team out to handle your winterization, freezing or breakdown may prevent the irrigation systems from turning on.

If you would like more information on lawn care services in Buffalo and neighboring towns, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675, or you can contact us to set up your Free Estimate.

Our Service Area is Expanding!

Posted by & filed under Advanced Irrigation News.

Advanced Irrigation is excited to announce that we are expanding our service area to include more cities and towns northwest of Minneapolis. This new area is in addition to our current service area around the Twin Cities. So if you are a current customer – don’t worry, we aren’t leaving you! We just want to let people know about our expanded service area, so we can help even more people with their irrigation and lawn care needs.

We are ready to start serving customers in the new territory. Here is a list of towns we will now include in our service area:Advanced Irrigation Service Area
• Buffalo
• Maple Lake
• Montrose
• Delano
• Watertown
• St Bonifacius
• Victoria
• Howard Lake
• Waverly
• Cokato
• South Haven
• Annandale
• Highland
• Howard Lake

 

If you live in or near any of the above towns and need lawn care services, please give us a call! We provide lawn irrigation, lawn maintenance and landscaping services for both residential and commercial clients. We can help your yard look great all year long.

With the seasons changing and fall quickly approaching, now is the time for winterizing your sprinkler system. We can get your system ready for winter by clearing out all the water so it cannot freeze and cause damage to the pipes. This is a very important task to have done before the cold weather sets in. We have the tools and experience to get the job done so you can be sure you’re system will be ready to work again in the spring.

We can also rake leaves and perform other fall lawn maintenance tasks so your home or business property will be in good shape before the first snowfall. Just let us know what you need done. If it’s lawn-related, more than likely, we can help!

If you have any questions about our lawn care services or about the geographic area we cover, please call us at 612-599-8675 or reach out to us with a Service Request.

The Parts of Your Lawn Sprinkler System

Posted by & filed under Irrigation Systems.

People seeking out lawn sprinkler systems in Lakeville and surrounding environs have been calling upon Advanced Irrigation for some time now. We install and maintain many types of irrigation systems, for the benefits of your general home landscaping. We will now take the time to share with you some of the most commonly used terms and their meanings when it comes to lawn sprinkler systems—what makes them tick and function as they do. See below:

  • Backflow Preventer:A device that only allows water to penetrate in one direction, preventing it from going in a backwards direction or even opposite direction. These part of the lawn sprinkler system helps keep unclean and unsafe water from going back on itself, reversing its course and coming into the clean water supply area of the sprinkler.
  • Controller/Timer:This is the part of lawn sprinkler systems that determines when watering should start and stop. To be completely obvious, it controls when and as a result, how much to water, through the usage of a timer.
  • Sensor/Rain Sensor:In the event of rain, this sensor automatically shuts off your sprinkler system in the event of rain. This helps to ensure that your lawn is not water too much, rain serving as a “free” sprinkler.
  • Sprinkler Head:Two common types of sprinkler heads exist in the lawn sprinkler system marketplace these days—rotor or spray types. Both come with requisite pros and cons and are utilized specifically depending on the type of lawn sprinkler systems that are required for your home. A rotor type sprinkler head rotates water in swaths back and forth or in circles over your grass or landscaping. A spray type is sometimes referred to as a “fixed spray head”, spraying in a fan-shaped pattern, akin to a shower nozzle.
  • Valve:A valve comes in a variety of types and usages. The primary vale types we run into with lawn sprinkler systems are emergency shut-off valves and irrigation control valves. An emergency shut-off valve is installed very closely to the water source within the lawn sprinkler system, functioning exactly as is implied by the name. This valve works as a mean to cut off the flow of water in an emergency situation or, if we come out to work on lawn sprinkler systems. It allows the lawn sprinkler system’s water supply to be cut off without having to shut off your entire house’s water supply. An irrigation control valve is the valve that turns lawn sprinkler systems’ sprinklers on and off.
  • Water Meter:This is a separate water meter from the one you may have in your home. This measures how much water your lawn sprinkler system used.

To learn more about lawn sprinkler systems in Lakeville, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675 or contact us for a Free Estimate.

Properly Adding Shade Trees to Your Burgeoning Landscape

Posted by & filed under Landscaping.

Many lawns and landscapes are fully exposed to constant sun. If you wish to be part of and directly enjoy your property, perhaps in a hammock, sometime you just want to lay in the shade. Why not implement some shade trees into your landscape design? Advanced Irrigation can help you with your shade tree needs with some landscape design for your Minneapolis home.

When planting a shade tree, many do not put enough thought into just where and how a shade tree should be added. There are two major things to consider. The first is that you will want to consider planting it somewhere “inland”—streets representing water—and not on the very edge of your property. If you plant shade trees near a street or at a point where municipalities will likely one day implement imminent domain and put a highway through your property, you run the risk of your tree being violated by power lines and the like. Right of way of overhead wires wreaks havoc on a tree, often to the point of eliminating its shading value. Our landscape design team is fully aware of this issue and would seek a location within your property where risk  is minimal.

A second problem involves just how your plant your shade trees. It is often thought to be elegant and regal to implement something of a platform or raised bed—surround by brick or stone—for a noble shade tree.

Problems can quickly arise. This raised bed, especially if it is built high enough to cover any of the trunk, will make life difficult for your shade tree. Soils will remain moist and not drain or feed the as it otherwise would in a standard planting situation. The soil will not aerate properly because it is compacted to that which encases it as well as the weight and understructure of the tree. Bugs and rodents will also find the area more appealing than they otherwise would, which tends towards damaged bark. These factors combine to rob your shade tree of nutrients, drying out and eventually killing your shade tree. It will be a slow death for your beloved tree. Trees grow slow and die slow. The process will start below the soil, near the trunk, working its way through the interior of the tree outward.

At Advanced Irrigation, our landscape designers are fully aware of just how and where to implement proper yard shading through shade trees. Season veterans all, our designers can assemble a perfect landscape design to please any and all.

If you would like more information on our landscape design skills in Minneapolis, call Advanced Irrigation at 612-599-8675, or you can contact us and get a Free Estimate.