Sprinkler, irrigation & drainage services in Cary, NC
Sprinkler repair, irrigation, French drains, and lighting — every service we offer, minutes from our own shop. This is our home town, and it gets our home-town standard.
Your local sprinkler & irrigation team in Cary
Cary is home base for us — more of our work happens here than anywhere else in the Triangle. That means when a zone dies in Lochmere or a backyard in Preston will not drain, we are usually minutes away, and we already know the water rules, the soil, and half the irrigation systems in town because we have worked on the neighbors’.
This page collects everything we do in Cary in one place — every repair, install, and drainage service, plus the local water facts that shape how systems here should run.
Everything we do in Cary
Every service below has a dedicated Cary page with local detail, pricing guidance, and its own FAQ:
- Sprinkler Repair in Cary
- Irrigation Repair in Cary
- Irrigation Maintenance in Cary
- Backflow Testing & Repair in Cary
- Sprinkler Installation in Cary
- Smart Controllers in Cary
- Winterization & Spring Startup in Cary
- Commercial & HOA Irrigation in Cary
- French Drains & Drainage in Cary
- Landscape Lighting in Cary
What Cary homeowners deal with
Water in Cary comes with its own playbook, and it shapes how every system in town should run.
What to know about water in Cary
One thing worth knowing before you assume you have a choice: where reclaimed water reaches a property, using it is not optional. Cary’s ordinance makes it unlawful to keep irrigating on potable water 90 days after the town notifies you that reclaimed is available. Reclaimed will also never cover the whole town — the system is capacity-limited by design — so whether you have it is a question of address, not application.
Cary runs one of the more distinctive water setups in North Carolina: it was the first municipality in the state to deliver reclaimed water to homes, back in 2001, and the purple-pipe districts near the North and South Cary Water Reclamation Facilities still irrigate on it today. Reclaimed users are exempt from the town’s alternate-day watering schedule; potable systems follow it year-round. In practice that means even-numbered addresses water Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, odd-numbered addresses Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and nobody is scheduled Monday. Drip irrigation and hand watering are allowed any day. New turf gets a 45-day exemption — but only one per account per year, and the town can void it without notice if it moves to an automated irrigation ban.
Two rules catch people out because they were never announced to them. A rain sensor set at a quarter of an inch has been mandatory on every automatic system in Cary since 1997, and the requirement is retroactive — a system older than the ordinance still needs one, and reclaimed customers are not exempt. The water waste ordinance sits alongside it, prohibiting overwatering to runoff and letting a known leak go unrepaired. Both carry daily penalties that escalate from $100.
On the compliance side, every irrigation system in Cary needs a backflow preventer. The three-year residential cycle is real, but it is not automatic — and this is the part most homeowners have wrong. Cary enrols residential irrigation customers in a town-coordinated annual test by default, carried out by a contractor the town appoints, with the fee appearing on your utility bill afterwards. Staying on the three-year cycle with a tester of your choosing means filing an opt-out with the town, and the opt-out has to be renewed every year. Miss a year and you are back in the annual program.
Booster pumps and chemical feed move you to annual testing regardless. We handle the testing, the repair and the filing either way, and we will tell you plainly which route costs you less — sometimes the town program is the sensible answer.
Common calls we get in Cary
- A zone that quit in an established yard. Mature neighborhoods mean mature systems — decades-old poly lines, shifted heads, and valves at the end of their life.
- Reclaimed-water nozzles clogging. Purple-pipe systems clog nozzles faster than potable ones; we clean, re-nozzle, and keep the lines properly separated as part of routine maintenance.
- Backflow due, and confusion about which cycle you are on. We check whether you are in the town’s annual program or opted out onto the three-year cycle, then test, repair if it fails, and file so your account stays clear.
- Nothing coming out in February. Cary shuts the entire reclaimed system down for maintenance for about ten days each February. It is scheduled, not a fault — but if you have winter plantings depending on it, plan around it.
- A soggy side yard that never dries. Cary clay plus tight lot grading sends water where it should not go — French drain territory.
Cary neighborhoods we serve
A lot of our Cary work happens in Preston, MacGregor Downs, and Lochmere, where mature landscaping hides aging lines, and in newer west Cary communities toward Green Level where builder systems need their first real tune-ups. Wherever you are in town, you are close to us.
Recent work around the Triangle
What our Triangle neighbors say
Why Cary chooses Cary Sprinklers
We are not a crew that drives in from across the county — Cary is where we live and work. Owner-led, fully insured, backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee and a 12-month workmanship warranty. Call or text 919-341-9644 and talk to someone who has worked in your neighborhood.
Cary through the year
Cary’s calendar has an extra fold in it that other towns do not, because two systems run side by side. If you are on potable water, the alternate-day schedule governs your summer and the 45-day new-turf exemption is worth knowing about before you lay sod rather than after. If you are on reclaimed, you are exempt from the schedule entirely — but you pay for that freedom in nozzles.
Purple-pipe systems need their filters and nozzles cleaned earlier and more often than potable ones, because reclaimed water carries fine grit that stalls rotors weeks before a potable system would notice anything. In the reclaimed districts near the North and South Cary reclamation facilities we treat that as routine maintenance rather than as a fault, and we would rather do it in April than diagnose a dead zone in July.
Autumn is the quiet half of the year and the better half for anything that involves digging. The turf knits back together ahead of winter, the ground is still easy to work, and nothing in the yard is relying on the system while it sits opened up. Drainage corrections, zone splits and line repairs all cost the same in October as in August and disrupt considerably less.
Cary has not been under a mandatory drought restriction recently, and the reason is Jordan Lake — while towns drawing on other supplies went into restrictions through 2026, Cary stayed on its normal year-round schedule. That can change, and the ladder is worth knowing: Stage 1 cuts automated spray irrigation to one day a week, Stage 2 stops it entirely and leaves hand watering, Stage 3 stops hand watering and drip as well.
Worth setting up whether or not there is a drought: Cary’s AquaStar portal gives you hourly water use and lets you set your own usage alerts. It is the most reliable way to catch a valve stuck open or a line weeping underground, because the bill arrives a month after the damage and the alert arrives the same day. If an alert fires and you cannot see why, that is a good moment to call us rather than wait — a zone that will not shut off usually means a valve that is not seating.
Winterization is the one date that does not move. One hard freeze splits a backflow assembly, and in Cary that means both the repair and a fresh test before the town’s cycle is satisfied. Getting the blow-out done before the first serious cold snap costs a fraction of handling it afterwards.
Working with us in Cary
Cary is our home town and our shop is here, which has a practical consequence rather than a sentimental one: response times are shortest in Cary and we can usually get to an emergency — a mainline gusher, a zone that will not shut off — the same day. Distance is the main thing that slows anybody down in this trade, and here there is very little of it.
Every visit starts the same way regardless of what you called about. We run every zone and watch it before touching anything, because on systems in Preston, MacGregor Downs and Lochmere that have had twenty years of mature landscaping grow over them, the fault you noticed is frequently not the only one worth knowing about. You get told what we found, what it costs, and which parts of it can wait.
We quote after diagnosis and before work, and we do not publish an hourly rate. Billing by the hour quietly pays for a slow diagnosis, and there is no quicker way to accumulate hours on a sprinkler system than swapping components until the symptom stops. A fixed number for a defined job keeps the incentive pointed the right way.
Nothing gets sold that is not needed. If your system needs a nozzle change rather than the new zone somebody else quoted, that is what we will tell you, and we will explain the difference clearly enough that you can check the reasoning yourself.
Cary sprinkler & irrigation FAQ
Do you know Cary’s alternate-day watering schedule?
Yes — we program every controller we touch to the town’s schedule, and reclaimed and well users are exempt, which we account for.
Can you service reclaimed-water (purple pipe) systems?
Absolutely. We work on reclaimed systems regularly — they need more frequent nozzle cleaning and strict line separation, and we handle both.
How often does my Cary backflow need testing?
Every three years for most homes, annually if you have a booster pump or chemical feed. We test and file the results.
Where are you based?
Cary is home base — we are a local company, not a franchise.
Do you handle both irrigation and drainage in Cary?
Yes — sprinklers, irrigation, French drains, yard drainage, and landscape lighting, all under one roof.
Get your free quote in Cary
Tell us what is going on with your Cary yard and we will get right back to you, usually the same day.
- Local & insured
- Upfront pricing — no surprises
- 100% guarantee + 12-month workmanship warranty
Need sprinkler, irrigation, or drainage help in Cary?
Local, fully insured, backed by a 100% satisfaction guarantee and a 12-month workmanship warranty.