One of most profitable additions to your lawn care service business can be repair of irrigation and sprinkler systems. Although plumbers may do this work, it is not their area of expertise and their hourly rates are often prohibitive for this type of work. There are irrigation companies that do installation that also do repair and maintenance and this is their speciality. As a lawn care operator you have an advantage with your immediate contact with an established client base, your own customers!

Most lawn care operators include minor sprinkler repair as part of service. Parts should always be charged separately. Major problems should be handled as separate jobs and charged by hour. The repair of irrigation and sprinkler systems is not something that can be estimated prior to start of job. The problems often lie underground and cannot be seen. You may be able, from experience, to look over problem and give a rough idea of what is involved, but always charge by hour for work, plus parts.

What you charge will vary from area to area. Generally irrigation repair is charged at a slightly higher hourly rate than lawn care service, but much less than what plumbers would charge. An example would be:

Lawn Care hourly man-hour rate: $25.00 per hour Plumber hourly rate: $85.00 per hour Irrigation repair hourly rate: $40.00 per hour

Have a minimum charge of one hour's work and stick to it. Tell client minimum up front. Before you actually start working you never know if it will be a ten minute job or a whole day. I could fill pages with stories of what we've found underground once we started digging, but at same time it's been more than once that I found problem was time clock was shut off or had no power.

Buy your parts at a wholesale supplier that sells to landscape contractor market. Mark your parts up a minimum of 30%. Always check discount hardware retailers in your area, like Home Depot, as they will often have better prices. When you buy at wholesale supplier you will not get best discount unless you have a contractor's license, so sometimes places like Home Depot will have better prices.

Keep a small stock of most often used sprinkler repair parts on your truck. Running to supplier for every repair job will waste time and eat into your profits.

The first question many lawn care operators ask is do they need a landscape contractor's license to do irrigation and sprinkler system repair work? You will need to check with your State Contractor's license board to be sure, but in most cases you do not. You would need a contractor's license to do installations of new systems that exceed certain dollar values (which vary from state to state in U.S.A.).

How to Get New Repair Customers

Are You Valued as a Leader?

A recent survey in UK asked employees what qualities they looked for and valued most in a leader. The responses were interesting and worth examining.

Trustworthiness.

Top of list came trustworthiness. A clear majority of those asked put this as quality they valued most. Could this be, I wonder, because they find that this quality is so rare? Recent examples of behaviour of some of top men in industry and commerce suggest that this quality is rare indeed.

A Good Communicator.

A close second was ability to Communicate. Employees like someone who can tell them what is going on. They like to be told what plans for company are and how it is performing. They like to have aims of company and their own part in it spelled out clearly and unambiguously.

Decisiveness.

Then came decisiveness. Employees look to their leaders to be decisive. They don’t want to be subject to frequent changes of direction or imprecise goals. They don’t want to see any form of shilly-shallying in their leaders. They want clarity and action.

Motivation and Inspiration.

The abilities to motivate and inspire followed next. Maybe these came lower down list because they follow from qualities listed previously. They are results of those other qualities rather than primary qualities themselves. After all, you are not likely to inspire anyone unless you are first a good communicator. You are not likely to inspire if you don’t know where you are going.

People Focused.

Being people focused as a desirable quality was next on list. This amounts to valuing and caring about your staff and looking after their well being at all times. This also is a quality that sometimes seems in short supply when going gets tough. But you won’t motivate or inspire without it.

Visionary and Strategic Planner