Official 2006 sprinkler winterizing thread!

[aquamtic]

You guys charging less than $ 60 per blowout must have some serious cheap gas rates where you live. Hou can you operate a vehicle, fuel for a compressor, cost of labor and profit doing a system for 30.00 and warranty against freeze damage. Showing up to winterize a system should not be any different that a regular service call to startup a system.
Here in our area rates have were the following last year;
1-4 Zones 70.00
5-8 75.00
9-12 80.00

Commercial: 15.00 per zone

[cush]

Most of these systems take me 15-20 minuites. I do between 25 and 30 a day and drive apox 30 miles the whole day. I do not go all over town, I only do the subdivisions I advertize in. I do not specify time of day only the day I will be there. If they want to be present they are told to pick a day they will be home all day. Last year I did 73 homes in one day. It was all in the same sub I just hooked up to the main line and went house to house opening up the valves. The no hose draging was sure nice. For those of you who charge $60 does it take more than 20 min? If not i would think there would be alot of people doing it if you could make like 1-2 grand a day.

[mojob]

Originally Posted by cush

Most of these systems take me 15-20 minuites. I do between 25 and 30 a day and drive apox 30 miles the whole day. I do not go all over town, I only do the subdivisions I advertize in. I do not specify time of day only the day I will be there. If they want to be present they are told to pick a day they will be home all day. Last year I did 73 homes in one day. It was all in the same sub I just hooked up to the main line and went house to house opening up the valves. The no hose draging was sure nice. For those of you who charge $60 does it take more than 20 min? If not i would think there would be alot of people doing it if you could make like 1-2 grand a day.

Since I don't have too much experience with blowouts, this might be a stupid question, but how do you do a blowout without the customer there? Don't you have to turn off the main (this is in the house usually where I live), and how do you know if you've done all the zones if you're manually opening the valves(hidden valve boxes). And don't you have to leave the ball valves at a 45 at the back flow? Like I said these might be stupid questions. Please enlighten me.

[jerryrwm]

Out of our customer list, we have two systems that we charge less than $68.00 (that is our minimum hourly rate) for blow-outs. One is the owner's home and we charge that at $34.00/hr. and the system at the vice president's house and that is $58.00. Everyone else pays. A residential system usually starts at around $70.00 and goes up from there depending ton the number of zones. I have a number of 4 zone systems that are in the same general neighborhood. $75.00 ea and a couple of them are right next door to each other. Then we have several commercial projects that take a good amount of time - most of the day for draining a 3" main and blowing out 80+ zones. But it is a $750.00 blow-out.

It all depends on the relationship you have with the type of customers that you have. Many of our customers expect to pay a lot of money for their services, and I don't want to disappoint any of them in that regard.

[Dirty Water]

I was really surprised when I was in Spokane last fall and I saw signs advertising blowouts for $ 25.99.

We couldn't afford to drive around for that rate.

[cush]

In my area all the subdivisions built after about 97 are all on pressurized irrigation. It is a seperate system that the developers put in. Each sub has its own pumping station and the main lines run on the back of the lot. Each home has a 3/4 or 1" valve in the back I just turn the supply valve off and hook onto a filter or hose bib. No going in house. You can see which sprinklers come on and if I can't find a box (this rarely hapens) I will call them and set up a time when I can use their controller.

[Dirty Water]

Originally Posted by cush

In my area all the subdivisions built after about 97 are all on pressurized irrigation. It is a seperate system that the developers put in. Each sub has its own pumping station and the main lines run on the back of the lot. Each home has a 3/4 or 1" valve in the back I just turn the supply valve off and hook onto a filter or hose bib. No going in house. You can see which sprinklers come on and if I can't find a box (this rarely hapens) I will call them and set up a time when I can use their controller.

Out here we have common systems that do just the easement strip by the road, but the actual lot irrigation is up to the owner.

[Hank Reardon]

Originally Posted by cush

For those of you who charge $60 does it take more than 20 min? If not i would think there would be alot of people doing it if you could make like 1-2 grand a day.

If making copious amounts of cash is wrong, "I don't want to be right..."

I have no desire to become a 501-3C...

[Flow Control]

For you guys that rent a aircompressor for shutting systems down what do you pay? Around $70 per day?

[SprinklerGuy]

$1200 for a month....