Heritage Irrigation at a glance
- Family-owned and operating in Virginia since 2001, with 5,000+ customers served
- Installs Hunter, Rain Bird, K-Rain, and Netafim components
- Smart Wi-Fi controllers with weather-adaptive scheduling and leak detection
- Systems designed for Richmond-area clay soils using cycle-and-soak programming
- 24-hour emergency line at (804) 357-1256
Before the visit
Four things make the appointment shorter and the documentation better.
- Clear the valve boxes. Mulch, leaf litter, and plantings grow over box lids across a season. A crew that has to find and dig out three boxes spends that time not purging zones.
- Confirm controller access. Garage, basement, or utility room unlocked, and the controller reachable rather than boxed in.
- Locate the irrigation supply shutoff. Usually a dedicated valve in the basement, crawlspace, or meter pit. If you do not know where it is, that is worth resolving now rather than during an emergency.
- Write down the season's symptoms. A zone that never reached pressure, a head misting rather than throwing, a patch that stayed wet, a controller that lost its program. These are cheap to diagnose in October.
During the visit: what a thorough purge looks like
You can tell a real blowout from a fast one by watching two things.
Zones are run individually, more than once. Each zone gets activated on its own and purged in multiple passes. A single sweep drives the water down the lateral and lets it settle back; the second and third passes are what actually clear the low points and the last stretch before a dead-end head. A crew in and out of a ten-zone property in fifteen minutes has not done this.
The backflow assembly gets its own step. Both shutoffs closed, every test cock drain port opened, and the body verified empty. This cannot be skipped or inferred - the water inside is sealed between two closed valves and will not leave on its own. It is also the most expensive component on the system to lose.
Watch the air pressure conversation too. It should be matched to the pipe diameters installed. Over-pressurising an aging or narrow lateral cracks the pipe the visit was meant to protect.
Why the Richmond metro is harder than it looks
Three local factors put more low points and more variability into an average system here than the temperature record alone would suggest.
The James River corridor and the swing between Richmond's river hills and flatter suburban terrain mean more grade transitions per system - and every grade transition is somewhere water collects. Soil varies within single properties across clay, loam, and urban fill, so thermal behaviour is not uniform even in one yard. And system age spans decades-old installs in established neighborhoods through to new construction across the Henrico and Chesterfield buildout, which means wildly different pipe diameters, valve types, and backflow assemblies.
Overnight lows in the teens and low 20s are routine, and Arctic air arrives fast down the Blue Ridge. Booking details for the metro are on the Heritage sprinkler winterization page for Richmond, VA, which covers the city, Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, and Goochland.
After the visit: what the record should contain
Ask for documentation, and check it says four things:
- Which zones were purged, by number, so a missed zone is visible on paper.
- Backflow assembly condition - type, condition, and whether certification was performed.
- Component issues observed, with enough detail to act on before spring rather than a vague note.
- Controller state at departure - rain delay or off, and whether the program was preserved.
Kept year over year, that record becomes the system's history, which is what makes the fifth-year diagnosis fast instead of exploratory. On a property you do not visit often, it is the only continuity you have.
Costs and the plan comparison
Heritage publishes winterization at $79.95, spring start-up at $79.95, and backflow preventer testing at $69.95. Annual plans that bundle start-up, a mid-season check, and fall winterization run $149.95, $209.95, $269.95, and $479.95 per year.
If you are already paying for all three services separately, the arithmetic favours the plan. If you only ever book the fall blowout, it does not. Work out which of those you actually are before choosing.
Book in September or early October. The metro's housing density means the calendar fills quickly once the first cold night is forecast, and commercial systems need to be sequenced earlier because they take longer to purge.