Our tentative start date this year for sprinkler blowouts is Monday, October 3. We will start with city, pump, and well systems first while we wait for the majority of pressurized irrigation to shut down for the season. I highly suggest that even though it might still be warm out the first few weeks of October that you don’t hold off on letting us blow out your system when your time comes up on our route. This valley is known for getting a quick freeze in the middle of the month and then warming up again until November. If you do see signs of a quick freeze coming, I suggest you winterize your backflow preventers ahead of time. There is no way we can get to everyone before a freeze comes, especially when it sneaks up on us. All in-ground piping will be fine until late November usually. Last year in the first week of December the ground temperature 6″ down was 38 degrees. I am not sure it actually got cold enough last year to freeze anything underground. You can get instructions on winterizing your backflow preventers, pumps, valves, and irrigation filters here: Winterize
We ran the entire season last year with only three machines because we had one break down on us at the beginning of the season. Even with that, we were able to complete 400 more blowouts than the year before with four machines since we were able to start early. We will be running four machines this year.
So far our technician lineup will be Jesse, Kelly, Trevor (who was off fighting fires all summer as a medic), and possibly Jerry. Trevor will not be able to start until October 10, so for the first week we will be running three machines.
Changes
- We had to raise our sprinkler blowout rate this year to counter the rising labor, insurance, and fuel costs. Diesel fuel is double what it was last year.
- Our service call rate for general repairs went up to $45 this year
- We are charging sales tax on all materials
- We are charging a transaction fee of 3.6% to %4.0 on all credit card payments. We absorbed more than $8,000 in transaction fees last year and got a scolding from our bookkeeper/accountant.
Updates
We will be updating the blog every night once the sprinkler blowouts get in full force as we have done for the last 12 years or so. This blog is still the easiest way to communicated with hundreds of people at the same time. We will still send out text reminders the night before, but some texts may not reach their destination for one reason or another which is why we update our routes every day here. I can’t control phone carriers, but I can control this blog.
See ya’ll soon…….