Your lawn won’t be doing much of anything for the next several months and your inground sprinkler system shouldn’t either. If you haven’t yet made assurances that your sprinkler system won’t burst a pipe during the winter, you’re running out of time.

Blowing water out of irrigation lines isn’t as easy as just running compressed air through the pipes. “You really need a constant 90 PSI (pounds per square inch) to do the job and most home air compressors can’t cut it,” said Brian Amick, owner of Metro Automated Sprinklers in Canton. “They may start out at 90 PSI but then the pressure in the tank drops.”

Catching those little drips helps, too. A slow drip will fill the lines during the winter, causing them to crack. This is something a professional irrigation specialist is trained to check. Another safeguard against leaks is to change from a gate shut-off to a ball valve shut-off to ensure a secure closure.

Other end-of-the-season checks that should be done include checking the backflow preventer so that water from the outside doesn’t back up into the indoor drinking supply lines and taking batteries out of any programmable systems, such as timers and rain sensors. Broken sprinkler head repairs and tune-ups are best handled in the spring.