Tidewater ground is the reason two neighbors can install identical equipment and get very different lawns. Irrigation system installation near Williamsburg, VA has to account for soil that shifts from heavy clay to sandy coastal loam within a single property line, and zone design follows from that before any equipment is chosen.

Most of the cost and nearly all of the performance is set in the design stage. Heads and controllers are commodities, and how the property gets divided into zones is not.