Bella Vista

To bring you up to date, I have taken a look at the sprinkler timer and it has been turned off for quite some time now. I was told that this was done in order for some repairs to be made on the zones. At this time we have not made any request for anyone to make an inspection of our irrigation system. I know for a fact that a sprinkler head has been broken off the pipe on the inside end of our the median at the first entrance, for months now. Each time I take a meeting sign to place there I see this broken head.

Yes, it is in the agreement with the landscape company to do regular inspections. But, in my experience with this where I used to live, they didn't keep up to their promise. Not only that but in my opinion this is where they can pad their paycheck by reporting broken heads and other stuff and we'd never know. So, I'm of the opinion at the moment that we need to have a qualified irrigation company do our inspections on an as needed basis.

It has been pointed out to me that we don't have any documentation that shows where the electric valves are for the different zones or how many zones we have. I would like to have a qualified irrigation company come in and give us something that we can keep on file and also have handy here on the web for reference. I hope to put this item on the next meeting agenda.

We've been getting some rain so the grass should be coming back. Hopefully we'll get the irrigation system repaired and going again before the summer drought hits us again.

I just read over this old post. We now have an irrigation company that will be doing quarterly inspections. Aqa Pro has been on site last week and replaced seventeen sprinkler heads and or rotors (the big ones). Ken, has replaced the rain sensor with a new wireless model. The one we had was installed in the common area and when that zone turned on the sprinklers wet the sensor within minutes and shut down the whole system. How do you like that, the whole installation was bad from the start. Who would have known. It took a professional I guess to find it.

Ken says he spent most of the day repairing a lot of broken pipes. That the first entranceway looked liked 'fountains' as most of the heads were missing or broken off. He assured me that everything should be fine from here on out.

The board decided that it was time to let a professional irrigation company take over the job as the landscaper was not doing it obviously. I've seen it standard practice for a landscape contract to include irrigation maintenance but from my experience, they are not qualified or just don't put the time into it.

If you see any problems, don't hesitate to call Denise or Camille at our new management company, West Coast Realty, 813-908-0766.

A resident called me last week to alert me to the fact that our sprinklers were once again running on the wrong day or days. I noticed that the median on my entrance was wet when coming home from work last Friday morning. The current county restrictions say we should only be watering on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I have emailed our newly elected President, Danny Crawford, about this and he replied that he would take care of it. Since Aqua Pro Irrigation is our new contracted irrigation company you might see their truck on the job one day soon. Hopefully this will be corrected soon before we are fined once again and the fine will be more than the last time it happened.

I gave it a week. Last Friday coming into the entranceway just after 7:00 AM I noticed that all around the median it was wet. Thus telling me that the sprinkler system had went off again on the wrong day as had been reported to me, and passed along to our new president, Danny Crawford. Realizing I had a key to the timer box I decided to go try to set the timer straight myself.

I just have to think that Ken with Aqua Pro never looked at the programming of the timer. He stated that he made the broken pipe repairs and replaced 17 broken sprinkler heads and even re-did the wiring in the box so the zones would go off in order from front of the community to the back. But, he never said anything about checking the programming.

Well, no one is perfect, right? It's a good thing we haven't received a bill from the county for a fine I guess. We paid Aqua Pro close to $800 if I remember correctly for all this work. They will be getting $90 every three months now too. I just hope they remember to check the timer often as when I checked it months back, I had to replace the 9 volt backup battery. This old failed battery is what had caused the timer to default to it's own watering schedule that we saw going off on so many odd days and times.

But, Danny will be monitoring their work I'm sure.