Sprinkler repair
Heads that won't pop, zones that won't fire, broken laterals, soaked valve boxes. Most fixes happen the same week the call comes in.
Old Hickory, TN — Davidson, Wilson, Sumner
Sprinklers, not landscaping. We don't mow.
Irrigation-only since 2016. Repair, install, valves, rotors, and mid-November blow-outs across the east-Nashville suburbs and Old Hickory Lake. Clay answers the phone.
Irrigation King TN
Irrigation King TN
Irrigation King TN
About Irrigation King TN
Nine years under TN yards — only the parts that move water.
Most Nashville irrigation work is bolted onto a landscape contract — the lawn crew installs the system, walks away when the install is done, and a year later the homeowner is calling around for someone to fix the rotor that won't pop. That's where this shop starts.
Irrigation King TN is one truck, one trade. Sprinkler repair, valve and rotor replacement, full installs when a yard doesn't have a system yet, mid-November blow-outs before the first hard freeze, and the low-voltage landscape lighting that usually runs on the same trenches. No mowing. No mulch. No subbing-out — the person on the phone is the person at the meter.
If it doesn't move water or shine a path, we don't touch it.
— Clay, owner
What we do — and what we don't
The work, plainly.
Five things, one truck, one trade. Pricing varies with the meter, the elevation, and what the previous installer left in the ground.
Valve & rotor replacement
Diaphragm-blown station valves, gear-stripped rotors, mismatched arc patterns. We carry Hunter and Rain Bird on the truck.
New irrigation install
Walked-in design, zone count sized to the meter, anti-siphon backflow assembly, smart controller. Three- to five-day install on a standard residential lot.
Fall winterization
Compressed-air blow-out, zone by zone, before the first hard freeze. Mid-November is the sweet spot in Davidson County. Schedule fills early.
Low-voltage landscape lighting
Path lights, uplights on Cumberland-basin trees, transformer + low-voltage runs on the same trenches as the irrigation. Calmer at dusk than the spotlight kits big-box stores sell.
What's under your yard — Middle TN residential system
One main line. Eight components. Nothing magic.
Most homeowners have never seen below grade. So here it is, cut open — every component labeled, every depth honest. When we walk your yard we're checking the same eight pieces, in the same order.
Meter + master valve
curbside
Water enters from the city main at the curb. The master valve is the first thing we touch on a service call — if a zone is leaking after-hours, this is what shuts the whole system down.
Anti-siphon backflow
above-grade
A pressure-vacuum breaker stops irrigation water from siphoning back into the household supply. Required by TN plumbing code. We rebuild these more often than any other component.
Wall-mounted controller
indoor wall
Hunter X-Core or Rain Bird ESP-LX, mounted indoors or in the garage. Programs each zone's runtime and start time. A bad controller looks like a bad valve until you put a meter on it.
Manifold of station valves
12" below grade
Each zone gets one solenoid-driven valve. When the controller fires Zone 3, only Zone 3's valve opens. Diaphragms tear after 5–8 TN summers — this is the single most common repair on the truck.
Lateral line at trench depth
10" below grade
Schedule-40 PVC, 8–12 inches below grade in clay-loam soil. Deep enough to clear a core-aerator. We pull the trench narrow so the seam knits closed under one good summer rain.
Pop-up spray head
flush at grade
Foundation-bed and tight-strip head — pops up under 30 PSI, throws a fixed pattern. Half-circles along the driveway, full-circles on the lawn island. The nozzle is field-replaceable.
Rotor mid-cycle
flush at grade
Gear-driven rotor — slow, steady arc, sized for open turf. Hunter PGP or Rain Bird 5000 series. The gear stack wears first; we rebuild the cartridge rather than swap the whole head.
PSI-compensating drip emitter
in mulch
On the foundation bed line. Half-gallon-per-hour pressure-compensated emitter, one per shrub. Keeps water off the siding and the brick weep holes. We use Netafim on long runs.
If a head won't pop, the problem is almost always one of these eight pieces. The hard part is figuring out which — not fixing it.
What we fix when the lawn crew won't come back
Four failures we see every week.
Most of our service calls start the same way: a yard with an irrigation system somebody else installed, a homeowner who can't get that somebody on the phone, and one of these four problems.
Case 01diagnostic
Valve diaphragm — torn
Symptom
Zone won't shut off, or won't open at all. Sometimes a quiet hiss at the manifold even with the controller off.
Cause
The rubber diaphragm inside the station valve has split. Lawn-crew installers buy commodity valves; the diaphragms tear after 5–8 TN summers.
Fix
Pull the bonnet, swap the diaphragm (sometimes the whole valve if the body is pitted), pressure-test the manifold. 30–45 minutes per valve, parts under $25.
Case 02diagnostic
Rotor — stripped gear
Symptom
Head pops up, water comes out, but the rotor doesn't rotate. Same patch of grass gets hammered while the rest of the zone goes dry.
Cause
The internal gear cartridge stripped — usually a tooth or two, then the rest follows quickly. Worsens after dirty water runs through it.
Fix
Field-replace the cartridge — the head body stays in the ground, only the guts swap. Five-minute fix per rotor, parts $18–$32 depending on series.
Case 03diagnostic
Lateral line — split
Symptom
Soft, sponge-wet patch in the lawn that won't dry out. Water meter spinning while the system is off. Pressure drop across one zone.
Cause
Schedule-40 lateral cracked — usually freeze damage from a missed winterization, or a landscape crew's edger nicked it years ago and the crack walked.
Fix
Locate the break with the meter probe, cut out the cracked section, slip-couple in a new length, sleeve and back-fill. 60–90 minutes typical.
Case 04diagnostic
Controller — dead screen
Symptom
Black screen. No zones fire on manual. The transformer hums but the board doesn't wake. Reset doesn't help.
Cause
Surge damage (common after a TN summer storm) or a failed transformer. Sometimes a corroded common wire is shorting the 24V supply.
Fix
Test the transformer, isolate the field wiring, swap to a known-good Hunter X-Core or Rain Bird ESP-LX. Reprogram zone times before we leave.
If a lawn crew installed your system, the odds say one of these four is what's wrong today. We don't need to have built it to fix it.
How a call turns into a fixed system
Five steps. No surprises.
- 01
You call the line
Clay picks up or calls back inside the hour. Tell him the address, the zone that won't fire, and what the controller is reading.
- 02
Walk the yard
Most jobs need a 20-minute walk-through before a real number lands. We bring a pressure gauge, not a sales sheet.
- 03
Written estimate
Parts, labor, and the hydraulic check on one page. No line items added later.
- 04
Scheduled work
Most repairs land inside seven days. Installs land inside three weeks. Winterization schedules close out by mid-October.
- 05
Walk-through + invoice
We run every zone with you watching, hand you a written hydraulic check, and won't leave until you've seen each head do what it should.
That’s it. No portals, no logins — a phone call or an email is all it takes.
Winterization countdown · Davidson County, TN
Mid-November. Before the first hard freeze.
Compressed-air blow-out, zone by zone, before the first sustained hard freeze. Schedule too early and the November storms still get you. Schedule too late and you're chasing the truck through a cold snap. The window is narrower than people think.
Schedule opens
Book now and you get the daylight slots. Frost risk is still two-plus weeks out — comfortable working temperatures, dry valves, no rushed-job energy.
Sweet spot
The right window. Davidson-County average first frost is around Nov 5; first hard freeze typically Nov 25 – Dec 5. Mid-month is dry, settled, and ahead of the freeze.
Late window
Still possible — we work through Thanksgiving week most years. But the schedule is tight and the first hard freeze can land any night. Daytime-only slots.
Damage-control season
Past this point it's not winterization, it's repair. Cracked backflow assemblies, split lateral lines, ruptured valves — all preventable with a mid-November blow-out.
Booking note
The November book starts closing around mid-October. If a winterization is the only call you'll make all year, make it the first one.
What folks have said
Repeat work. Plain reviews.
Called about a stuck valve and a rotor that wasn't turning. Clay was out the next afternoon, replaced both, and the bill was a fraction of what the company that originally installed the system wanted to quote.
On time, knew the controller cold, and got the system humming again. Had him back in November to blow it out before the freeze. Will keep using him.
Saturday call, Saturday repair. Most irrigation shops won't even pick up the phone on a weekend. He brought the parts on the truck and we never had a second visit.
Honest quote on a re-zone after a big landscape job, did the work himself, and the controller programming actually made sense when he handed it back. Not the usual landscape-irrigation runaround.
From the truck
Recent work, around the lake.
Old Hickory — Hunter rotor mid-cycle after diaphragm rebuild 
Hermitage — full-yard zone test after rebuild 
Mt. Juliet — back-yard rotor after gear replacement 
Madison — pop-up spray on a hydrozone for a foundation bed 
Hendersonville — early-morning cycle on a retuned controller 
Donelson — fescue after a 12-minute pre-dawn run 
Goodlettsville — third-season healthy turf on a retuned system 
Old Hickory — install on a brick ranch off Hadley Bend
Honest pricing
Service call from$95/visit
Repair visits start at a $95 walk-out — applied toward the work if you book the fix. Winterization blow-outs are zone-billed; a standard six-zone residential system runs in the $75–$110 range. New-install quotes come in writing after a site walk.
Free phone consult. We don't quote installs sight-unseen.
Call (615) 955-2635Questions — Irrigation King TN
Plain answers, no runaround.
No. One trade, done well. Most of the systems we fix were originally installed by lawn crews who don't return for the rotor-replacement call. Specializing means we have the right parts on the truck and the right pressure gauge in the toolbox.
Call Clay — the owner answers
— Irrigation King TN
If we're on a job we'll call back the same day. Old Hickory, TN.