Expert IrrigationPlenty of Broward and Boca properties draw irrigation water from a lake or canal rather than from the meter. It is cheaper water and there is a lot of it, but the failure modes are different enough from a city-water system that a contractor who mostly works on meters will misdiagnose them.
Loss of prime
The most common call. A centrifugal pump drawing from open water has to hold prime, and it loses it through a failed foot valve, a leak on the suction side, or a water level that has dropped below the intake during a dry spell. The symptom is a pump that runs and runs without delivering pressure. Repeatedly re-priming it manually is a workaround, not a repair, and running a pump dry damages the seal.
Intake screens and what lives in a lake
Lake intakes clog. Algae, hydrilla and other aquatic weed, leaf litter, and shell debris all end up on the screen, and flow drops off gradually enough that people do not notice until zones start underperforming. The screen also has to sit deep enough to stay submerged at low water and high enough to stay out of the silt on the bottom, which is a narrower window than it sounds.
Salt after a storm — the one people miss
This is the diagnosis worth knowing about, because it looks like everything else. A storm surge or major flooding event can push salt into a lake and hold it there for a season. The symptom is landscape decline across an entire community that resembles drought or disease, does not respond to more water, and in fact gets worse the more you irrigate. If a whole neighbourhood on a shared lake pump declined at once after a storm, test the source water before anyone starts replacing plants.
Weston, Boca and the HOA question
In Weston the City irrigates its own common areas from canals and lakes, and residents drawing lake water are asked to sign an agreement with the district — so there is paperwork as well as plumbing. Across the Boca country club communities, lakes feed a large share of the irrigation. Two things are worth stating plainly. Drawing from a lake does not exempt you from the watering restrictions; the rule covers private connections to lakes, ponds and canals exactly as it covers wells. And where a community shares a pump station, a fault is a community problem rather than a homeowner one, which changes who you need to be talking to.
Sand, silt and what it does downstream
Open water carries particulate that a meter never delivers. Over time it scores valve seats, wears nozzles, and shortens diaphragm life across the whole system. Filtration at the pump is worth having, and it is worth cleaning — an unmaintained filter eventually becomes the restriction it was installed to prevent.