Irrigation services · Denver / Front Range
Even water,
not more water.
Audits, repairs, retrofits and seasonal service for sprinkler systems that should be doing better. We measure every zone with catch cups, show you exactly where the water lands, and fix the hardware that’s causing it — then measure again.
- Certified Landscape Professional
- Licensed general contractor
- Self-performed — no subcontractors
- Raw readings with every audit
Services
Everything from the backflow to the last head
01
Audits & calibration
Catch-cup testing on every zone, precipitation rate and uniformity worked out per head, and a controller schedule set from the numbers instead of a guess.
$30 / zone tested
02
Head retrofits
Hunter PRS-40 pressure-regulated bodies with MP Rotator nozzles. One body, one nozzle family, every head at 40 PSI — no fogging, no mismatched throw.
$55 / head
03
Repairs
Broken lines, cracked fittings, buried or tilted heads, and the damage other trades leave behind. Fixed, flushed and run before we leave.
Quoted on site
04
Dead zones & wiring
Zones that won’t come on: continuity on every station, then a ground-fault locator on the field wire until the break is found and repaired.
$175 / hr tracing
05
Backflow & master valves
Pressure vacuum breaker replacement, copper supply runs, and master valve swaps — wired to your controller and pressure-tested. Certification test available.
Itemised quote
06
Controllers
Reprogramming from measured run times, and controller upgrades sized to the property — residential and commercial, with sensors that actually serve each zone.
$75 reprogramming
07
Start-ups & blowouts
Spring start-up, a mid-season check, and a fall blowout that clears every zone before the first hard freeze.
Quoted per system
Not sure which?
Describe what you’re seeing and we’ll tell you whether it needs a repair, a test or a retrofit.
Call 720.437.4198
The method
Measured, not eyeballed
Most brown spots aren’t a run-time problem. They’re a uniformity problem — mismatched heads on one valve, nozzles fogging at the wrong pressure — and running the clock longer drowns the rest of the lawn to rescue the dry patch.
Every head, on a grid
Calibrated 4.5″ cups set around each head, then a timed 10-minute run. Each cup is read to the millilitre mark — that’s the raw data everything else comes from.
Inches per hour
How fast the zone puts water down. It sets how long the zone should run — and on Front Range clay, whether it runs off before it soaks in.
DU — 70% to pass
The driest quarter of the cups against the zone average. Below 70%, the controller is being set for the dry spots and the rest of the zone is overwatered.
Case study · August 2026
4343 Holly
A large residential property with roughly 86 zones across several controllers. Phase 1 started at two of them: a walk-through, then a catch-cup audit of every working zone we could reach. Here’s what 169 cups said.
Zone by zone
| Zone | Heads | Cups | PR in/hr | Uniformity (DU) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CB1 · Zone 1Retrofitted | 3 | 9 | 0.88 | 91.3% | Pass |
| CB1 · Zone 3 | 3 | 9 | 1.02 | 67.5% | Marginal fail |
| CB1 · Zone 4 | 5 | 20 | 0.69 | 53.2% | Fail |
| CB2 · Zone 1 | 4 | 17 | 0.89 | 74.6% | Pass |
| CB2 · Zone 2 | 5 | 27 | 0.32 | 18.9% | Severe fail |
| CB2 · Zone 2Retrofitted | 5 | 25 | 0.56 | 55.1% | Fail |
| CB2 · Zone 3 | 3 | 18 | 0.63 | 41.3% | Severe fail |
| CB2 · Zone 4 | 4 | 17 | 0.71 | 52.5% | Fail |
| CB2 · Zone 5 | 1 | 9 | 0.29 | 78.3% | Pass |
| CB2 · Zone 6 | 2 | 18 | 0.27 | 51.7% | Fail |
The driveway zone, before and after
Three head types on one valve: Rain Bird 1800 sprays, a Rain Bird 5000 rotor and an unmarked rotor. Most cups caught next to nothing while a few by the sprays flooded. Every bar below is one cup, grouped by head.
Hunter PRS-40 bodies (40 PSI, check valve) and MP3000 nozzles; two heads relocated behind the tree off the portico. Uniformity nearly tripled. It’s still short of 70%, so the zone is booked for a coverage recheck around the relocated heads, with the high cups re-read.
What the audit found
- Poor uniformity was a hardware problem, not a design one. Mixed body series, mixed nozzles and heads off level on a shared valve — so no run time could ever water the zone evenly.
- The standard retrofit works. The one zone already on Hunter PRS-40 bodies and MP3000 nozzles measured 91.3% — the best on the property, at 0.88 in/hr.
- Fix the worst first. Retrofit priority runs CB2 Zone 3 (41.3%), then CB1 Zone 4, then CB2 Zones 4 and 6 — each priced per head from the head-by-head readings.
- Still to come. Four CB1 valve boxes to locate, four more CB2 zones to test, the remaining controllers, and Phase 2 diagnostics on the stations that don’t run at all.
The year
A system looked after all year
Mar – May
Spring
Start-up: charge the system slowly, check the backflow, run every zone and fix what the winter broke.
Jun – Aug
Summer
Audit season. Zones are running and the lawn shows the pattern — the right time to measure and retrofit.
Sep – Nov · Now
Fall
Blowout before the first hard freeze. Backflow and valve work goes first, so new parts winterise with the rest.
Dec – Feb
Winter
Plan the spring: retrofit quotes, controller upgrades, and a place on the start-up list before it fills.
How a job runs
From the first call to the re-test
- 1
Call
Tell us what you’re seeing — brown spots, a zone that won’t run, a water bill that jumped.
- 2
Walk the system
Controller, backflow, valve boxes and every zone, with the problems marked as we go.
- 3
Measure
Catch cups where uniformity is the question; continuity and wire tracing where a zone is dead.
- 4
Quote
An itemised quote, valid 30 days. Anything found beyond it is quoted before any work — nothing you haven’t approved.
- 5
Fix & re-test
The work, then the same test again, so the result is a number and not a promise.
Rates
Priced by the zone and the head
Phase 1
Precipitation-rate audit
A walk of the whole system, a catch-cup test on every zone, and a written report that shows where each zone over- and under-waters and why.
- Site walk
- $350
- Catch-cup DU test
- $30 / zone
- Data analysis & report
- $400
- Controller reprogramming
- $75
- Travel
- $0
Phase 2
Dead-zone diagnostics
For zones that won’t come on: continuity on every station, then a ground-fault locator on the wire until the break is found.
- Continuity check
- $30 / zone
- Wire fault tracing
- $175 / hr
- Findings report
- $300
Retrofit
Head retrofit
Hunter PRS-40 pressure-regulated bodies with MP Rotator nozzles — one body, one nozzle family, every head at 40 PSI.
- Existing head swap
- $55 / head
- New head install
- $110 / head
- Head relocation (retrofit included)
- $110 / head
FAQ
Questions we get
Why not just run the sprinklers longer?
Because a dry spot is usually a uniformity problem. Running longer to rescue the driest quarter of a zone overwaters the rest of it — and on clay soil, a lot of that runs off. Fix the coverage and the run time can come down.
What does a DU of 70% mean?
Distribution uniformity compares the driest quarter of the catch cups to the zone average. At 70% or better the zone waters evenly enough to schedule properly; below it, the schedule is being set by the dry spots.
Why Hunter PRS-40 bodies and MP Rotators?
Most poor uniformity we measure is mixed hardware: different body series, different nozzles, heads off level, all on one valve. A pressure-regulated body holds every nozzle at 40 PSI, and MP Rotators put water down slowly enough for compacted Front Range soil to take it.
Will you do work I haven’t approved?
No. Every job starts from a written, itemised quote. If testing turns up a valve, head or wiring fault outside it, we report it and quote it separately before touching it.
Do you subcontract the work?
No. The audit, the report and the repairs are done by the same licensed contractor who quotes them.
Does a new backflow preventer need testing?
Many water providers require a certification test on any new pressure vacuum breaker. We can test it after install, and we schedule backflow work before the fall blowout so the new parts are winterised properly.
How is a job billed?
Audits by the zone, retrofits by the head, everything else by itemised quote. 50% deposit on acceptance, balance on completion.
Find out where your water goes
Flatirons Services is run by Chris Conn — Certified Landscape Professional and licensed general contractor. You get the raw readings, the analysis and a head-by-head plan.