Lawn Care Forum banner

Great Aim

3K views 24 replies 11 participants last post by  Waterlogged 
#1 ·
Always amazes me how random penetrations seem to find the irrigation line. Tent peg pierced thru and thru, from last June. Must have been leaking underground for a while w/o rising to the surface. They said this area was not getting enough water and someone added a #10 nozzle to the PGP head. Made the volume & pressure even worse.

Wood Grass Asphalt Tree Bedrock
 
See less See more
1
#5 ·
Thursday when using the 521 to located a turf-hidden valve for a customer, we busted a class main with a philips screw driver poking for valve box (Texas)....

`what was intended to be a $70- 10 minute locate job became a $55- 30 minute horseshoe fix AND valve locate, topped with an "im very sorry about your torn up turf"
 
#6 ·
Around here a pest control company uses bare wooden stakes inside a round plastic housing for termite monitoring. I repaired two breaks on one job where they drove stakes through CL 200 pipe.
 
#7 ·
Thursday when using the 521 to located a turf-hidden valve for a customer, we busted a class main with a philips screw driver poking for valve box (Texas)....

`what was intended to be a $70- 10 minute locate job became a $55- 30 minute horseshoe fix AND valve locate, topped with an "im very sorry about your torn up turf"
i take back the good things i've said about texas locators, $70 is peanuts for a pro, rhett.

no locate is a 10 min job

on top of that, you should be able to hit the valve box, not the mainline :rolleyes:
 
#11 ·
im all ears, how peanuts is it?
i like you and don't want to insult you but you're leaving too much on the table. you are worth about 2/3 more than what you charged

i can't drive to a job, meet the client, unload, analyze, connect, trace, reconnect, locate, pickup and leave in 10 mins.

none of these jobs work out to be that quick.

i get a $200 bill each time i locate, guaranteed find or no money. i get my share of work, so would you.
 
#13 ·
I charge $48,000 and I find one valve every three years :p
my hat's off to you and you're my new hero;:waving:

i don't like to throw around the money issue but we're pros and should be comp'd for it.

it takes too long to go to a job and meet with the client, properly diagnose the system and locate the valve(s) to be charging a small amount for.

the lawn is worth thousands and the owners are paying you to find something that they can't on their own without renting a locator;

scenario #1, owner spends time looking for valve, no go. calls pipe and sprinkler suppliers till he finds a place to rent a 521, $50+ deposit, drives down and gets a 521, they give him a quick run through (maybe) he spends unknown amount of time looking for valve and finds it....$50 and his day is shot.

scenario #2, same as above but he still can't find the valve and he's piss'd at the supplier and tells them the 521 doesn't work, he's out $50 and a day to boot.

scenario #3, he calls rhett and rhett tells him that he wants **** to find the valve, owner gets piss'd at rhett and says hes already spent $50 and lost a day of his life looking for a valve with some pos 521 he got from some pos supply house and his yard is burning up, rhett says **** and the valves found, guaranteed. owner lets yard burn, shoots self.

scenario #4, same as above except for the death and distruction, rhett this time tells the guy that he guarantees the locate, finds the valve collects the **** and is on his way, the owner might be jacked about the **** but he will remember rhett as a good businessman and solid locator, shoot, rhett might just get the repair to boot.

i have a number of calls with people saying my fee is too much, i tell them to ask around the suppliers for a troubleshooter and my name comes up first, twice last week this happened, in fact i just called a guy (because of this reply) and he'll abandon the zone rather than pay to find it, he's already spent too much and nobody can find the valves (7 zones, 1 valve stuck open) he's gonna dig the heads up and cap them. if people want to do things like this, let them, they aren't gonna repair your 521 if it stops, replace it if it gets stolen, buy you batteries or pay for your fuel in the truck, what if you need a new multimeter or a pulser or TDR, $70 is beer money, you as a contractor are worth more than that per hour aren't you?

boots, i'll run the TDR and 521 for $24,000, with 18 months lead time of course:laugh:
 
#14 ·
I bill $65 for the fist hour locating and $75 for each additional. Rarely does it take more than 15 - 20 minutes to find a valve.

This fee is in addition to the $75 service call and we're there to fix the problem, not just locate a valve, so a service call, valve locate and diaphragm is a minimum $190. I've been able to show up, unload, locate and repair the valve, run the rest of the system, test the BPV and be in the van on the way to the next call in less than an hour several times. I don't think that's peanuts but I have considered raising my prices.
 
#16 · (Edited)
my locator speaks to me in volumes
mostly in large sums

getting into dry hardpan type soils usually took awhile longer
then after you find a box it might take a pick axe to start getting acces to the valve. not to mention the fire ants, scorpions and extra dirt in the box

I did hire a monkey once to help clean out boxes while i located more. After he busted a main at a dentist office I was like.ugh why me.
 
#17 ·
i was informed an hour ago that my fee was not only reasonable but cheaper in the long run than my competitors, the average my new customer had been quoted was $30-35 for the locate call out, $50 for the 521 rental and $30 every 1/4 hour, no guarantees. adds up quick don't it.

will locate valves on monday eve.

IMHO we are pros and as pros we should be compensated for our knowledge and experience. rhetts leaving too much on the table for the service he provides.
 
#18 ·
If I may, I'm going to take this back to the original post. I assume a hijack can be re-hijacked? :laugh:
Years ago I was called out for a leak in the back yard. We fixed the first one, and it looked familiar. And when I found the other seven, I thought it must have been from a tree company that had come out to fertilize the trees, because the holes were perfectly round and tree companies use a tree probe to fertilize. But, alas, there were no trees in the backyard.
I showed the holes to the owner and asked if anybody had been working in his yard. He said no, but when he looked at the holes, he hesitated and had a funny look on his face. He said, "It might have been me". I asked why and he told me "Well, I'm a gun dealer, and I just bought a new silencer"
Texas Baby! :laugh:
 
#19 ·
If I may, I'm going to take this back to the original post. I assume a hijack can be re-hijacked? :laugh:
Years ago I was called out for a leak in the back yard. We fixed the first one, and it looked familiar. And when I found the other seven, I thought it must have been from a tree company that had come out to fertilize the trees, because the holes were perfectly round and tree companies use a tree probe to fertilize. But, alas, there were no trees in the backyard.
I showed the holes to the owner and asked if anybody had been working in his yard. He said no, but when he looked at the holes, he hesitated and had a funny look on his face. He said, "It might have been me". I asked why and he told me "Well, I'm a gun dealer, and I just bought a new silencer"
Texas Baby! :laugh:
Now that is one for the ages. That is a classic.
 
#21 ·
I did have one job two years ago, where the company doing locates for a customer, put their probe straight through the poly main line. It probably sealed up enough while they were doing the locates, but once they pulled it out it leaked. How they didn't see the water come up instantly is beyond me though. We've now installed a master valve to help prevent this again, as it partially washed out a rock wall.
 
#22 ·
i like you and don't want to insult you but you're leaving too much on the table.
no worries ! :)

You can imagine that this is good news for me to hear.

Many thanks for the suggestion to raise prices, also im curious about your M.V. Replacements pricing, I have swapped over 70 valves this year. Seems to be my main job.

I hardly get any calls for spray and rotor head replacements, customers are swapping their own it seems.

Also, customers always seem to throw in "can you program our controller?" and "will your run throught our 9 zones and check the heads?" , do you guys do this for free, or do you assert that it will cost extra?
 
#23 ·
Also, customers always seem to throw in "can you program our controller?" and "will your run throught our 9 zones and check the heads?" , do you guys do this for free, or do you assert that it will cost extra?
Heck no it isn't free. It's part of the service and our service gets billed. Every job we go to, we check and adjust the entire system. Leaking backflow? Check the system. One broken head? Check the entire system. It all gets billed out.
 
#24 ·
It will cost them less to pay you to fix it while you are there then pay you another service call charge to come back. I always run through the system while I'm there. That includes making suggestions on how to set the controller to water properly instead of the 10 minutes a day stuff we all see all the time.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top