Rang Earth and Water after business hours with a retic leak requiring mains isolation. Given it was after business hours I was hoping for a call back next day, to my surprise the phone diverted to Nigel who not only took my call but provided troubleshooting advice and guidance until he could arrange an onsite visit. Top shelf customer service and response, definitely recommended!

I definitely would not recommend Earth and Water’s drip irrigation system

In the past few years I had alterations carried out on my house and garden, during this process I contacted Earth and Water to obtain advice on their drip irrigation system as my next door neighbour was having such a system installed by them. Nigel Thompson, the managing director of Earth and Water came out to see me and told me that it would be a great saving as all the pipes would be underground with a dripper system which would stop any water evaporating and that the system itself would only need 15 to 20 minutes running time for each station.

Due to the hype placed on Earth and Water’s drip irrigation system by Nigel I went ahead and had it installed, unfortunately right from the inception it did not work as it was claimed it would. Watering times were not 15 to 20 minutes; they varied from 30 minutes to 1 hour dependent on the station involved. Plants commenced to die and the new lawn which was also laid by Earth and Water also commenced to die. The reason for this lay in the fact that the water outlets became blocked although I was assured that this would not happen.

The problems continued and Earth and Water eventually ran an acid solution through the system on 2 separate occasions, this also did not alleviate the problems and I eventually ended up running the system for a greater length of time on each station, which also did not help overcome the problem.

My property is situated on sand and instead of the water from the system spreading, as it was claimed it would, it evidently went straight down.

At present the system is totally blocked in many places and I have had to resort to hand watering and using a normal garden sprinkler in endeavour to keep my garden and lawn alive. Due to this I contacted Earth and Water on the 5th December 2014 explaining the situation that I now had to water the garden and lawn by hand, and on the allowable watering days I used a normal garden sprinkler attached to the main water scheme, this took nearly 2 hours as I had to change the sprinkler from one position to the next – it defeats the purpose as I do have a pump and bore. After numerous phone calls Nigel finally came out to see me on the 30th January 2015. By then my water bill had possibly more than doubled.

Nigel’s suggestion was that I could consider going back to the original sprinkler system at a cost of approximately $2.500, and that is just for the front lawn. He said that he had no idea why the system was not working and was not prepared to spend money on investigating the problem. The original price that we spent with Earth and water amounted to several thousand dollars.

Hence it now appears that the money spent with Earth and Water was a total waste of money and I now have to reinstall a reticulation system similar to the one that I originally had. Hopefully anyone reading this review does not make the mistake that I did by accepting Nigel's presentation without seeking another opinion.

Further to this matter my next door neighbour has experienced the same problems that I have experienced, hence my problems with the drip irrigation system is not an isolated incident.