BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES Call In the Pondsitter

You can almost hear the pre-vacation banter between husband and wife. 
    
“Honey, did you put a hold on our newspaper subscription?”
“Sure did.”
“Ask the Joneses to pick up the mail, take Fluffy to the kennel and call the pondsitter?
“Yes, yes and – what?!”
    
As more homeowners add ponds, waterfalls and water gardens to their outdoor living spaces, opportunities will open up for contractors to care for these features. Pondsitting, or “vacation checkups,” as St. Clair Shores, Mich.-based contractor Pondering Waters calls them, are just one of several water feature maintenance offerings contractors can provide their clients.
 
“Customers love the services that go along with their ponds,” says Jeff Michaels, owner of Pondering Waters. “A lot of them are professionals. They love to enjoy their ponds, but they don’t have time to do maintenance.”

Aside from pondsitting, pond maintenance firms provide weekly or monthly pond maintenance, spring clean-outs and pond closings. These services can supplement cash flow when pond installations are down and serve as a marketing tool to build client rapport. “The more contact we can keep with our existing clients beyond installation leads to more referrals,” says Cliff Raitz, president of TerraScapes, Costa Mesa, Calif.
 
Michaels agrees. “I’m finding service is everything in ponds – it’s not just install and go,” he says. “I’ve found out that a few of the jobs we’ve landed vs. other contractors is because we’re more service-oriented.”

SERVICE OFFERINGS. When it comes to water features, there are two types of customers, Raitz says. Some clients are water gardening enthusiasts who dote over their water lilies, treat their koi like pets and consider maintaining their pond a hobby. And then you have clients who want beautiful ponds without the “hassle.”
 
This second type of customer is the reason TerraScapes added pond clean-outs to its mix five years ago. While this service is usually performed starting in March in most parts of the country, TerraScapes offers clean-outs anytime of year because it’s located in Southern California, where customers keep their ponds open year-round.
 
Clean-outs involve draining some of the water; removing fish; removing, cleaning and dividing aquatic plants; power washing the pond, rocks and waterfall; and cleaning the filter and other components. The next step is to refill the pond, add de-chlorinator and any necessary beneficial bacteria or fertilizer and acclimate the fish before putting them back in the pond.
 
Another offering, especially important in colder climates, is closing ponds for the winter. Pond closing usually takes place during October, Michaels says. Winterizing a water feature entails removing pumps and fountains, cleaning them and storing them in a bucket of water in the homeowner’s basement so the seals don’t dry out and crack. The next step is bringing tropical plants inside or disposing of them (they can be treated as annuals and replaced the following year). Next, debris is removed and filter systems are taken out, rinsed and stored in a shed or garage. Finally, contractors add a pump to the skimmer box (at least 1,400 to 1,600 gallons per hour, Michaels says) with a discharge hose to maintain an opening in the ice for gases to escape because fish are generally left in the pond during the winter.
 
Routine maintenance is one more service contractors can offer. Some clients enjoy cleaning filters and trimming back plants; others don’t. Contractors can offer to provide these services to their customers, in addition to fixing any minor repairs, testing water for pH levels and adding beneficial bacteria or fertilizer.
 
And as for a vacation checkup, it’s as simple as sending someone to check on the pond periodically during a client’s time out of town. “Some people are worried that they’ll come back and something will have gone wrong,” Michaels says, adding that general maintenance and potential leaks are clients’ biggest concerns.

ADDING IT ON. To effectively add pond maintenance to a business, a thorough understanding of fish and aquatic plant health and an overall knowledge of a pond’s ecosystem is necessary. Some manufacturers offer certification programs that include maintenance training, require continuing education and make available instructional DVDs and manuals.
 
Manufacturer-sponsored training is the route both Raitz and Michaels took. “I try to keep everybody going to classes at least four times a year to keep up with new techniques,” Michaels says of pond installation and maintenance training for his employees. “Even if we’ve been to the classes before, we often go again. You never know when someone’s going to ask a different question.”
 
Being a pond installer also usually ensures you’ll have most of the appropriate equipment for servicing water features (for a general list of what you’ll need, see “Pond Maintenance: Equipment/Tool Checklist,” above). “We pretty much had everything we needed thanks to our day-to-day operations doing installations,” Raitz says.
 
Sales, scheduling and pricing, however, are often left up to trial and error.
 
Pond maintenance contractors agree you should present the service options at the initial installation consultation – this offering may be a client’s reason for choosing your company over an installation-only firm.
 
Once Michaels sells an installation, he gives his clients a packet that includes information about their warranty, pond specifications and service options for regular maintenance, spring clean-outs, pond shutdowns and vacation check-ups. He sells each service separately rather than as a package, which allows his clients to remain flexible. Many customers don’t mind routine maintenance but prefer to leave more in-depth jobs like clean-outs and shutdowns to the pros.
 
For regular maintenance and vacation checkups, contractors typically charge flat rates. Michaels offers three levels of service – silver, gold and platinum. These range from $60 per month (including filter cleaning, plant pruning and checking liners), to $150 to $200 per month for more detailed, bi-weekly maintenance.
 
For replacement parts, Michaels says most contractors charge the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices, which is usually no less than a 50 percent markup.
 
Seasonal services can be tricky to price because the condition of the pond often depends on how well the homeowner cares for it and the last time the pond was cleaned out properly in the spring or shut down properly in the fall. To ensure profitability, Michaels has tracked the average amount of time it takes to perform clean-outs and shutdowns based on pond size (he says an 11-by-16-foot pond would take about two to three hours for a clean-out). Michaels’ pricing for seasonal services includes a $60 service charge plus $50 per hour.
 
Michaels estimates his company nets a 30 to 40 percent profit margin on pond maintenance and says finding an appropriate price range is one ticket to success. Overcharging can drive customers to try to complete services on their own, he says, noting a small, bathtub size pond shouldn’t cost $200 to clean out. “A pond like that might take you less than an hour and if you charge them too much they’ll do it themselves next time.”
 
Scheduling proves to be one of the most difficult tasks in the business of pond maintenance, many contractors say. To service routine maintenance clients, Pondering Waters has a dedicated one-man crew who takes care of monthly maintenance customers and small repairs. It’s the boom and bust of the seasonal services, however, that can be a lot more challenging.
 
During the spring and fall, Pondering Waters’ installation crews turn to maintenance. Two two-man crews complete about 150 clean-outs and shutdowns per season. “Having two crews in the spring really helps,” Michaels says. “The quicker we have them done we can begin installations again.”
 
To minimize scheduling conflicts, Michaels mails reminder notices about a month before the seasonal services begin, typically offering an incentive for customers who book early. For example, Michaels sends out shutdown information in September and takes $10 per hour off the shutdown price for customers who schedule their service prior to a mid-October deadline.
 
Michaels also uses these notices as an opportunity to up sell customers on pond products. He includes a list of products a customer might need for each season, and customers simply check off which ones they’d like delivered during their service call. Items on the springtime list include beneficial bacteria, fish nets, aquatic plants, etc. Winterization forms include bubblers, heaters, nets, etc. “That way, they can check off the products they need and we can bring it out to them,” he says. “They don’t have to worry about finding the time to pick up these products – it will all be done for them.”
 
Overall, Raitz and Michaels agree that adding a pond maintenance component is beneficial to the business of a contractor who already installs water features. “Pond servicing can be profitable,” Michaels says. “It’s another service that can make you money.”