L-06.LI · Lighting & Irrigation
Irrigation & Lighting in Rome, GA
Low-voltage lighting laid out for the walk up to the door and the view back at the house, plus zoned irrigation that keeps new sod and new plant material alive through a Georgia August.
See it built
What it includes
- Low-voltage path and uplighting
- Transformer sizing and zone layout
- Irrigation zones, heads and controller
- Drip to bed and container planting
- Backflow prevention and winterization
New planting does not survive a Georgia August on rainfall
Sod and nursery stock go in with almost no root system relative to the canopy they are carrying. For the first season they depend entirely on consistent water, and a Northwest Georgia summer does not supply it consistently. It supplies three weeks of nothing and then two inches in an afternoon, which is the worst possible pattern for establishing turf.
Hand watering works for exactly as long as somebody remembers to do it, which is usually until the first holiday. Irrigation is what protects the investment in everything else that was just planted, and it is meaningfully cheaper to install before the turf goes down than to retrofit through it.
Lighting is a different argument. A property that has just had serious money spent on it is invisible for half the hours the family is home. Low-voltage lighting is the cheapest line on this list that changes how often the space actually gets used.
How it is laid out
Irrigation starts with zoning, and zoning starts with the fact that turf and beds want completely different things. Rotors throwing across an open lawn and drip feeding a shrub bed cannot share a zone without one of them being wrong. Sun and shade split further.
Heads are selected and spaced for head-to-head coverage so there are no dry arcs, matched within each zone so precipitation is even, and set at the right height for what they are watering.
Backflow prevention is installed to protect the potable supply, and the system is set up so it can be winterized properly rather than left to freeze.
The controller is programmed for establishment first, which is a much heavier schedule than a mature landscape wants, and then handed over with instructions for stepping it down. An establishment schedule left running into year two produces shallow roots and fungus.
Lighting is low-voltage, with the transformer sized to the run and the fixture load rather than to whatever was in the van. The layout is done for two views: the walk up to the front door, and the look back at the house from inside it. Uplighting on structure and specimen trees, path lighting where people actually walk.
What moves the number
Both are quoted by the installation rather than by area, because the count of zones and fixtures drives the cost far more than the size of the property.
For irrigation: the number of zones, which is a function of how many different watering conditions the property has rather than how big it is; the water source and pressure available; and what the trenching has to cross. Established roots, existing hardscape and driveways all add.
For lighting: fixture count and transformer capacity, run lengths, and again whether cable has to get under anything finished.
The single biggest cost factor for both is timing. Installed during the landscape build, the trenching is already open. Retrofitted afterward, it goes through finished lawn and beds, and that is most of the labor.
What poor systems look like
Dry arcs and brown crescents in the lawn, from heads spaced past head-to-head coverage or mixed types sharing a zone.
A bed on the same zone as the turf, either drowning or bone dry depending on which one the schedule was written for.
A system that was never winterized, discovered in spring as a cracked backflow assembly.
On lighting: glare instead of light, because fixtures were aimed at the viewer rather than at the thing being lit, and a transformer running at its limit so every fixture on the far end of the run is dim and yellow.
Questions we get asked
- Do we need irrigation if we are putting in new sod?
- Strongly recommended, and it is cheaper to do it at the same time. New turf needs consistent water through its first season and a Georgia summer will not provide it. Sod is the larger investment of the two and irrigation is what protects it.
- Can irrigation be added to an established lawn?
- Yes. It means trenching through finished turf, which is the bulk of the extra cost, but the lawn recovers. It is a normal job, just a more expensive one than doing it during a build.
- How many zones does a typical property need?
- It depends on conditions rather than acreage. Front lawn, back lawn, sunny beds, shaded beds and containers all want different amounts of water, so a modest property with varied conditions can need more zones than a large simple one.
- Is landscape lighting worth it?
- It is the lowest-cost item on this list that changes how much the space gets used, because it extends the property into the hours the family is actually home. It also does more for how the house looks from the street than anything except the planting.
Where this work leads
Towns where irrigation & lighting is usually the first job
Get a price on irrigation & lighting
Quoted by the each, line by line, after a site walk. Across 21 counties from the shop in Floyd County.
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