Marking Sprinkler Heads for Aeration

[Nebraska]

Does anyone else charge for the time to mark sprinkler heads for aeration?

[mcambrose]

Sure I charge like I charge for anything else involved in the process. I add my time in before I prepare a price. I don't show it as a line item just like I wouldn't show the time to load/unload and clean up the machine.

[proline32]

I as a rule make the customer mark where sprinkler heads are prior to my comming out for aeration, they also understand that if I hit a sprinkler head that is not marked that I am not liable to replace the head.

[GroundKprs]

Not too many even know where heads are. Better they pay me $10 to $25 to mark the heads (which I have measured, so I can do a spring aeration before system is turned on), than to pay $45 plus parts for an irrigation service call.

Like above, time is just included in price for aeration.

[dmk395]

I drop flags to the customer, they mark before I arrive.

[Brickman]

Originally posted by proline32
I as a rule make the customer mark where sprinkler heads are prior to my comming out for aeration, they also understand that if I hit a sprinkler head that is not marked that I am not liable to replace the head.



In my opinion this is best.

If they can't find them or don't want to, wait until the system is on and find them that way.

[Nebraska]

ok....just sit out there and wait until the system is on. I bet that could be a very profitable wait. I don't know about you but I have much better things to do than starting at 3 am and waiting for each zone to run it's cycle. Ever heard of manually starting each zone? Amazingly enough there a number of folks who do not have a clue about their sprinkler system. I would in a perfect world like the customer to mark the heads for us, the problem is that it's not a perfect world. The result being we charge for it.

[Brickman]

You are right about having better things to do at 3 AM than wait for the sprinkler to come on. PILLOW being one of them.

I meant wait until the system is started for the season.

[LAWNGODFATHER]

It is includes in my pricing scale, but if I can get them to do it, its more money made by me.

I have also done like GroundKprs has a few times, but they paid extra out the yin yang for it.

[Strongmd]

We don't mark them anymore. It takes too much time either driving around dropping flags off or marking them myself. We've probably done 45 aerations this year and haven't had a problem yet. If I break 1 or two heads, it's still cheaper than the alternative.

[Scraper]

Why don't you just run a test where heads pop-up for 1 minute. I can mark 16 zones in less than half an hour with almost 50 heads.

[MOW ED]

$40.00 an hour 1 hr minimum.

[HBFOXJr]

It's one of the reasons I charge $85 for the first 5K and not $50 (5k @$10/K) like many. Around here the majority of my lawns are irrigated. I need the extra $ to get to the job, mark the sprinklers and help pay for the machine and Ithink it is still too cheap as a base price.

[Strongmd]

How do you run a test when no one is home? We haven't broken a head yet this year, so I think it's been a good decision. Saves a lot of time.

[ant]

client marks heads.
ant