The property was recently finished. The garden was planted, the lawn was laid, and the owners were buying their water by the truck.
On a routine maintenance visit something was wrong with the lawn. Patches of it were the wrong colour, and the ground underfoot was wet at the surface in a way it should not have been between waterings. That pointed to something below the surface.
We lifted the turf and dug. The hole filled with water before we reached the pipe.
The main line had split. Not from age — the installation was only months old — and every time the system ran, it ran into the ground. It had been doing that since the garden was handed over: wasting water the owners were paying to have delivered by truck, and drowning the lawn it was supposed to be feeding.
The repair took an afternoon.
We found a second leak at the same property, in a gravel bed, under the geotextile membrane that was supposed to keep the weeds down.
Then a third — the main line split again, this time under the decking. You cannot see under a deck. Someone has to feel for it, a hand pushed into wet ground between the boards.
We have now found three separate failures in the original irrigation at this property: under the lawn, under a gravel bed, and under the decking. Not one of them was visible from the surface, and not one would have been found by looking at the garden from the terrace.
The installation was months old when we started.