Does Napa offer a free sprinkler inspection?

Yes. If your water bill comes from the City of Napa, you can ask the city for a free Water-Wise Home Survey. A city Water Conservation Specialist comes to the house, inspects the sprinkler system, looks for leaks and leaves you with recommendations and a watering schedule. It costs nothing.

What it isn't is a repair visit. The survey tells you what's wrong and what would help. Fixing it is your job, or the job of whoever you hire. Knowing that going in makes the visit much more useful.

What does the City of Napa check on a Water-Wise Home Survey?

The city's survey page lists what the specialist does on the visit:

• Checks for leaks and recommends repairs.
• Inspects your irrigation system and recommends improvements.
• Gives you an appropriate irrigation schedule.
• Shows you how to read your water meter.
• Tells you which rebate programs apply to you.
• Checks shower heads, faucets and toilet flush volumes indoors, and hands out free high-efficiency fixtures if they're warranted.

For the yard, the meter lesson is the part people underrate. Once you know how to read it, you can turn everything off in the house and watch whether the meter still moves. That habit can show you a hidden irrigation leak before the bill does.

Who can get a free water survey in Napa?

The survey page offers it to the city's single-family and multi-family residential water customers, and it asks apartment owners and managers to use it too. It's a City of Napa program, so it follows the water account. Next door in American Canyon, for example, water comes from the City of American Canyon, which runs its own programs. Check whose name is on your bill before you call.

You book it by email or by phone, both linked from the survey page. If you'd rather start on your own, the same page links two short videos, a DIY indoor water audit and a DIY outdoor one.

How do I get the most out of the visit?

Do a little homework first, so the specialist spends the time on your actual problems:

• Know your zones. Find the controller and note which zone waters what. A strip of masking tape inside the controller door with "front lawn, side beds, back drip" saves a lot of guessing.
• Write down the trouble spots. The patch that browns every August, the bed that stays soggy, the head that spits instead of sprays.
• Find the meter box. Clear anything sitting on the lid so it opens easily.
• Have a couple of recent bills handy. A jump that doesn't match the season is worth pointing out.

Then walk the system with them while each zone runs. Ask them to show you on the ground, not just in the notes, where a head is tilted, blocked by a shrub or throwing water onto the driveway.

What happens if the survey finds a leak?

Two of the city's own rules start to matter once you know a leak exists. The city's water waste regulations say leaks greater than one gallon per minute must be repaired within 30 days of discovery. And the city's billing FAQ on underground leak adjustments allows one adjustment per account or address every five years, for a leak of more than 5,000 gallons, with the application in within 60 days of confirming or discovering the leak.

So a confirmed underground leak starts a clock. Keep the specialist's notes, keep the repair receipt and ask the Finance Department how they want the adjustment paperwork before the 60 days run out.

Underground irrigation leaks rarely announce themselves. A cracked lateral can feed the roots of a lawn that looks perfectly healthy. Our page on irrigation leak detection and repair explains how a leak gets traced to the main line, a single zone or one valve.

Is a free water survey the same as a sprinkler repair visit?

No. The city's page describes a water-use visit: leaks, fixtures, a schedule and recommendations. It doesn't describe testing why a zone won't turn on, why a valve won't shut off or why a controller keeps dropping its program.

Those are wiring and valve problems, and they need testing, not a walk-through. Our sprinkler system diagnostic follows the path one zone depends on, in order: controller, field wire, valve, pipe, heads, then the pressure behind them. We run every zone and put what we found, and a free quote for the fixes, in writing. If the city's specialist has already flagged the problem zones, hand us those notes. They give the diagnostic a head start.

A sensible order for most Napa homes is survey first, then repairs, then whatever upgrade the survey pointed to.

Which sprinkler upgrades does the City of Napa help pay for?

The survey page links three programs, and the specialist can tell you which ones fit your yard.

| Program | What the city's page offers | Do this first | | --- | --- | --- | | Cash for Grass | $2.00 a square foot to replace lawn, up to $2,000 for a single-family home | Book the pre-inspection and wait for the Notice to Proceed before any lawn comes out | | Rachio smart controller | A discounted Rachio 3 for City of Napa water customers, offered in short limited-time windows with limited units; check the city's page to see if one is open | Count your zones (the city's offer has 8 or 16 zone models) | | Flume water monitor | A discounted Flume monitor that sends leak notifications to your phone | Call the Water Conservation Specialist to confirm your meter works with it |

Cash for Grass has firm rules. The city's page says bare dirt, or lawn already removed before the pre-inspection, isn't eligible, and artificial turf doesn't qualify. A brown lawn from cutting back water is accepted, as long as it was historically maintained and irrigated. Our rebate finder lays out Napa's programs beside the other towns we serve, and the drip conversion page covers what happens to the old spray zones once the lawn is gone.

A new controller only helps if it's set inside the city's rules. The city's water waste regulations page says not to irrigate between 10 am and 5 pm, during rain or within 48 hours after measurable rainfall, or to the point of excessive runoff, and notes that some exceptions apply. Any schedule you get from the survey, or program into a new controller, has to fit those hours. Our sprinkler controller replacement page covers mounting, wiring and setting one up.

What to do next

Book the survey and keep the notes the specialist leaves. If they point to leaks, a stuck valve or zones that need rebuilding, bring that list along when you compare repair options. Our Napa lawn, sprinkler and lighting page shows the rest of what we look after for homes in town.