Why fall beats spring

In spring everyone wants water at the same time, the ground is wet, and every contractor's phone is ringing. In fall the ditch is empty, so you can see the bottom and both banks. A lot of years there is still a dry stretch before the winter rains when the ground is workable. Anything that needs a permit, a part on backorder, or a contractor's time has the whole winter to come together.

The trick is to do the walk while the season is still fresh in your head. By March you will not remember which turnout never ran full.

1. Walk the ditch while it is dry

Walk the full length, both banks, and mark each problem on a map or with a GPS photo. Look for:

• Burrows. Gopher, ground squirrel, and muskrat holes are a common cause of bank failures. One hole can turn into a washout the first week water is back.
• Sloughed or low banks. Any spot where the bank has settled close to the high-water line has lost its freeboard. That is where the ditch will overtop.
• Silt bars and sediment. Every inch of silt in the bottom is capacity you lost. If a reach ran slow and full all summer, sediment and weeds are usually why.
• Vegetation. Weeds and brush raise the channel's roughness. A ditch that ran fine in April can lose much of its capacity by August. Willow and blackberry roots also open seepage paths through the bank.
• Culverts and crossings. Check both ends for debris, crushed pipe, and scour at the outlet.
• Wet spots after shutoff. Ground that stays soggy below a bank after the ditch has drained points to seepage.

If a reach overtopped or never carried the water you needed, run the numbers before you rebuild it the same way. Our guide on sizing a ditch with Manning's equation walks through the capacity and freeboard check.

2. Check every headgate and turnout

Run each gate through its full travel. A stem that binds in October will not loosen up over winter. For each one, check:

• The seal. Close it and look for light or wet marks around the frame.
• The frame and wall. Look for cracked concrete, undercutting, and water finding a way around the structure instead of through it.
• The stem and threads. Clean them, grease them, and replace bent stems before they break under load.

A small leak costs more water than you might expect. A gap equal to 2 percent of a 1 square foot gate, under 0.75 ft of head, leaks about 38 gpm. That is roughly 55,000 gallons a day, and about 30 acre-feet over a 180-day season. The math is in our headgate flow guide.

3. Drain pipe, pumps, and valves before a freeze

Water left standing in pipe freezes, expands, and splits fittings, valve bodies, and pump casings. Before the first hard freeze:

• Pipelines. Open the drains at every low point and let the line empty. Leave valves partly open so trapped water has somewhere to go.
• Pumps. Pull the casing drain plugs and lock out the power. Check packing or seals, and note anything that leaked or ran hot this season.
• Filters, screens, and drip. Flush drip laterals and clean or pull the filters and screens. Silt left to dry in place is harder to get out in spring.
• Above-ground equipment. Drain and store hand lines, wheel lines, and portable pipe. Follow the manufacturer's winterizing procedure for pivots and linears.

While you are at it, write down the pump's pressure and amp readings from late in the season. If next year's readings show more amps for less pressure, the pump is wearing, and you will have a baseline to prove it.

4. Write down what the season told you

The equipment is only half the checklist. The other half is what you saw running it:

• Which fields or ends of fields came up short, and when in the season?
• Which sets took longer than they should have? Our water units guide has a quick set-time check: hours = acres × inches ÷ cfs.
• Did the far riser or sprinkler lose pressure? That usually means the pipe is undersized for the flow. See pipe sizing with Hazen-Williams.
• Where did you lose the most time moving water or walking ditch?

These notes are where the bigger projects come from: a pipeline conversion, a new headgate, a re-graded field. Winter is the time to price them out.

5. Turn the list into a plan

Rank everything you found, in this order:

1. Things that can fail and flood someone. Weak banks above a road or a neighbor, burrowed fills, and undercut structures.
2. Things that waste water. Leaking gates, seepage, and lost ditch capacity.
3. Things that waste time. Gates that are hard to set, sets that run long, and access problems.

Then get quotes and book the work. Work in or near a natural stream or wetland can need state or federal permits, and those take time to come through. If you are inside an irrigation district, check with the district before you change anything on a shared ditch or a district structure.

For districts and canal companies

The off-season is your maintenance window. Before the crews start, pull together every problem reported during the season and sort it into a winter work list by location and priority. That is the job WaterOps is built for. Water users report problems by clicking the map, and each repair stays tied to the canal, lateral, or headgate it happened on. By fall the season's reports already are your work list.

The checklist

• Walk every ditch dry and mark burrows, low banks, silt, brush, culverts, and seeps.
• Check headgates through their full travel: seal, frame, stem, and grease.
• Drain pipelines at low points, pumps at the casing, and every valve and filter.
• Record late-season pump pressure and amps.
• Note fields that came up short and sets that ran long.
• Rank repairs by failure risk, then water loss, then time.
• Check permit needs and district rules, and book contractors before spring.

Put this winter's plan on the map

Draw your ditches, headgates, and pipe over aerial imagery in FieldFlowCAD. The app checks capacity, flags velocity and grade problems, and prices the repair before anyone digs.

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