Long Island winters don't need to be brutal to wreck an irrigation system. One night in the low twenties is enough to freeze whatever water is sitting in a lateral line, and when that water expands it splits pipe, cracks valve bodies, and pops the internals out of sprinkler heads. L.I. Sprinkler & Gutter Corp performs sprinkler winterization across Levittown, NY, and the surrounding communities, clearing every drop out before the cold gets a chance to do any of that.
Seasonal service makes up a large share of the work at L.I. Sprinkler & Gutter Corp, a residential lawn sprinkler system contractor that Jay Hurtado started in 2010. The company runs out of Levittown, NY and covers twenty Nassau County communities, Hicksville, Wantagh, Merrick, Seaford, Bethpage, and Massapequa among them, with 600 to 700 irrigation accounts on the books. Sprinkler winterization here means a compressed air blowout of every zone, draining and shutting down the backflow assembly, powering down the controller, and flagging anything that will need attention come spring, all covered by a two-year workmanship warranty.
Nobody discovers a winterization problem in December. It surfaces in April, when the system gets turned on and water starts bubbling up in the middle of the lawn, or a zone comes on and nothing happens at all.
Water expands by roughly nine percent when it freezes, and that expansion has to go somewhere. Inside a buried lateral it pushes outward until the pipe splits along its length. Valve bodies crack at the seams, backflow assemblies break where the brass runs thinnest, and heads holding water in the riser blow their internals apart. Poly pipe tolerates a little of this, though the fittings, valves, and brass components never do.
Getting the water out takes compressed air and a methodical run through the system. We shut the supply off at the source, connect to the mainline, and blow each zone individually with the valve open, watching the heads until they run dry and stop misting. Pressure stays controlled so the air clears the line without chewing up nozzles and seals. The backflow device gets drained with its test cocks opened, and the controller either goes into off mode or shuts down entirely depending on the unit.
You head into winter knowing nothing in the ground is holding water. Spring start-up goes smoothly instead of turning into a repair call, and the components you paid for make it through another season. Set against what a cracked mainline or a ruined backflow assembly costs to replace, the blowout is the cheapest appointment on the calendar.
Here's what the fall visit does for your system.
Backflow assemblies, valves, and controllers cost far more to replace than a blowout costs to schedule. Clearing them out in fall keeps a hard freeze from taking any of them.
Each zone gets blown individually rather than all at once, which is the only way to be certain the far heads actually run dry. Rushing through it leaves water behind in exactly the spots most likely to freeze.
Too much air will destroy nozzles and seals faster than ice ever would. Regulating the output clears the lines without putting stress on the components you're trying to protect.
Running every zone in fall surfaces the worn heads, weeping valves, and coverage gaps that developed over the summer. You get a heads-up on what to address before spring rather than discovering it in May.
Sprinkler winterization from our crew carries the same two-year workmanship warranty as everything else we do.
Winterizing covers one half of the seasonal cycle, and these are the services that round it out.
Opening a system in spring calls for the same care as closing it in fall, since sudden pressure on empty lines causes damage of its own. Spring sprinkler start-up brings everything back online gradually and gets the controller programmed for the season ahead.
Systems drift out of alignment over a summer of mowing, weather, and settling soil. Sprinkler system tune-up and inspection covers head cleaning, arc adjustment, pressure checks, and a full review of how the system is performing.
All of our seasonal and preventive work lives under sprinkler maintenance, which is where most homeowners start when they want a system looked after year-round.
Fall fills up in a hurry, and here's what keeps customers coming back to us for it.
Hundreds of local accounts come through our fall schedule every year, plenty of them installed decades ago. Older brass and unusual valve arrangements don't slow our crew down.
Late October through November is the window, and we schedule around the forecast instead of a fixed date on a calendar. Beating the first real cold snap is the entire point of the appointment.
Estimates cost nothing whether you're a returning customer or calling for the first time. Pricing gets quoted up front with no additions after the fact.
Jay Hurtado has run this company since 2010, and the people showing up at your house work for him directly. Nobody gets subcontracted in the middle of the arrangement.
HomeAdvisor and Nextdoor both carry feedback from homeowners around Nassau County who use us for seasonal service. Reading through those beats taking our word for it.
Late October into mid-November covers most years around Nassau County. The goal is getting it done before the first sustained overnight freeze, which usually arrives sometime in November but has shown up earlier than that.
Manual and automatic drain valves help, though they rarely clear everything, particularly on a flat lot like most of Levittown where the lines have no natural low point to run toward. Compressed air remains the only reliable way to empty a system completely.
Some homeowners get lucky during a mild winter, but the risk compounds year over year. Cracked mainlines, split valves, and a ruined backflow assembly each cost several times what the service does, and those repairs tend to surface right when spring schedules are most backed up.
It does, since brass backflow devices are among the first components to crack in a freeze. We drain the assembly, open the test cocks, and set the ball valves at a forty-five degree angle so any moisture left behind has room to expand.
Most Levittown properties run somewhere between twenty and forty minutes depending on zone count. Larger systems out in Jericho or Old Bethpage with a dozen zones can take closer to an hour.
These winterization FAQs were reviewed by Jay Hurtado, owner of L.I. Sprinkler & Gutter Corp and a local lawn sprinkler system contractor serving Nassau County since 2010.
Blowout season runs short and the schedule tightens quickly once temperatures start dropping. Call L.I. Sprinkler & Gutter Corp and we'll lock in a date that beats the cold.
Business Name: L.I. Sprinkler & Gutter Corp
Address: Levittown, NY, 11756
Phone: 516-225-5553
Business Hours:
Mon - Sat: 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM
Sun: Closed
2 Year Workmanship Warranty