The lawn care industry, both manufacturers and contractors, has done a good job of selling homeowners on the benefits of aeration. Perhaps too good a job.
Healthy turfgrass is often an invitation for heavy pedestrian traffic, which leads to excessive compaction of the soil and poor root growth. And contractors realize that the benefits of aerating a lawn include short- and long-term plusses. For the short term, aerating changes the physical and chemical characteristics of the soil and thatch, thereby improving water retention. An annual aeration of a lawn will also help breakdown the thatch layer and serve as a substitute for a direct topdressing. However, lawns that haven’t been aerated regularly in the past may require multiple aerations to achieve the desired levels of thatch and compaction control.
Nowadays, aeration is an easier sale to make. “Homeowners have become educated on the value of lawn aeration,” noted Greg Schreiner, president and owner of Aeration Consultants, Inc., Denver, Colo. “Proper aeration can save them up to 25 percent of their summer water bill, especially in a drier climate like Denver. Plus, their lawns look better.”
Lorne Hall, president and owner of Western Lawns in Oklahoma City, Okla., said only about 1 percent of his customers request aeration service, but there’s potential for “at least 10 percent if we promote it more.”
PRICING TO PROFIT. When it comes to offering an add-on service such as aeration, many contractors are challenged to find the proper price.
“Today, the issue is pricing,” Schreiner said. “Because aeration is readily accepted, there are a lot of one- or two-person operations and weekend part-timers that will aerate a yard for $25. That makes it harder for professional firms like us, because our minimum starts at $37 per yard.”
Schreiner knows the aeration business well. He moved to Denver from Illinois in 1985 and literally started his business with one truck. Today, Aeration Consultants services 10,000 residential customers in the Denver metropolitan area, as well as 50 commercial accounts as large as 40 acres of turf.
Aeration Consultants now averages more than 80 employees and has a landscape maintenance division as well as a landscape installation division. Aeration remains the firm’s primary business, however. And, despite the low-ball price competitors, it’s a profitable operation for the company.
“We do pick up some customers from the low-price guys,” Schreiner acknowledged. “A homeowner who bought the $25 deal last summer will call us. Either they can’t find the person now, or they weren’t satisfied with the job and want it done better this year.”
In general, Schreiner said his rates are “around $10 per 1,000 square feet” for home lawn aeration while commercial clients pay from $5 to $7 per 1,000 square feet, depending on the size and layout of the property.
Sandy Springs Lawnscapes, Smyrna, Ga., provides aeration to its residential and commercial customers, but it’s an “add-on” to the regular full maintenance package.
“Although it’s a billable extra, about 80 percent of our customers request aeration,” said Greg Ehrenberg, assistant maintenance manager for Sand Springs.
Whereas cool-season grasses are aerated in conjunction with overseeding and customers are charged a “combination” rate for both jobs, warm-season aeration is performed as a “straight labor” operation and charged accordingly, said Ehrenberg. Rates vary from around $10 per 1,000 square feet to $17 to $18 per 1,000 square feet, depending on lawn size, slope, obstacles, etc.
Aeration work is usually handled by Sandy Springs Lawnscapes’ lawn care technicians, according to Ehrenberg, because it fits in better with those technicians’ usual duties, and they try to fit in aeration jobs between their second and third scheduled pesticide applications.
He noted that when Sandy Springs compiles its customer contracts for landscape maintenance jobs each spring, the company establishes service routes with an eye toward grouping customer that will received the same services as each other, such as aeration.
Ehrenberg said the company runs seven maintenance crews, serving a customer base that is about 35 percent commercial and 65 percent residential. Most homeowner lawns average around 8,000 to 10,000 square feet. “Aeration is a good revenue source for us, and homeowners and grounds managers can definitely see the difference it makes in turf,” he added.
| Buying The Best |
| Making an aerator purchase requires sifting through a range of variables.
There are three primary considerations in selecting aeration equipment, according to Bob Brophy, product manager for Turfco, Minneapolis, Minn. “Number one is operator comfort and safety. Number two is production and profitability. And number three is the machine’s maintenance requirements,” he said. Ease of lift is important to operator comfort. “Aerating 10 to 15 lawns a day means the operator will activate the lift perhaps 2,000 times a day,” Brophy explained. “If it takes 50 pounds of force to raise the lift, that’s a total of 100,000 pounds of force the operator expends every day.” Besides lift force required, machines should be easy to turn and handle well on sidehills, Brophy added. “How much does the aerator wobble back and forth as the operator walks across the lawn? A machine that wobbles creates extra muscle tension between the operator’s shoulder blades after six to eight hours of work.” Bruno Harris-Quanquin, vice president of marketing and sales for Bluebird International, Englewood, Colo., said more maneuverable aerators create less fatigue for the operator. “Things like free-wheeling outer tine wheels to facilitate turning take less energy and enhance productivity,” he said. A primary indicator of productivity can be the spacing of the tines used to remove soil cores. Tines vary in size, but most are ¾-inch diameter and, depending on such variables as soil type, soil moisture, weight of the aerator, etc., will penetrate from 2 inches to 4 inches deep. Tine spacing may vary from unit to unit and in some cases can be modified by adding or removing tines or tine wheels. For example, ¾-inch tines spaced 6 inches apart and penetrating 3 inches deep will remove about 1.2 percent of the soil volume in a 3-inch soil profile. The same size tines placed 2 inches apart will remove about 10 percent of the soil volume in the same 3-inch soil profile. Generally, closer tine placement opens up more soil for increased water and fertilizer uptake. Where compaction is a problem, closer tine spacing relieves compaction better. – Gary Burchfield |
Western Lawns prices aeration services on a time basis rather than area covered. “We shoot for a return of $30 per labor hour for aerating,” Hall said. “Our pricing varies by size of yard, of course, but requirements for a 5,000- to 6,000-square-foot home yard are considerably different from a 100,000-square-foot commercial property.”
RIGHT ON TIME. Turf specialists say most lawns can benefit from at least one aeration per year, and heavily used lawns will benefit from more aerations. Cool-season turfgrasses can be aerated in the spring, fall or both. with a spring aeration being conducted between March and May, and the fall aeration taking place from August to November.
Warm-season turfgrasses should be aerated while they are actively growing – mid-spring to summer. Avoid aerating warm-season grasses while they’re dormant; it may encourage cool-season weed growth. Also, it’s best to avoid aerating warm-season turf during spring greenup. Wait until after the grass has been mowed at least once.
Because of Denver’s dry climate and cool-season turfgrass, most of Schreiner’s customers order spring and fall aerations. “If it’s a hot summer, some customers ask for a mid-season aeration,” he said.
For fescue and other cool-season lawns, Sandy Springs typically aerates in the fall, usually while overseeding. “Even if the lawns don’t need overseeding, we still recommend fall aeration because it improves turf health and appearance,” added Ehrenberg.
He said they may aerate cool-season turf in spring, but don’t recommend it unless aeration is followed up with a preemergence application for crabgrass.
Warm-season turfgrass varieties, such as zoysiagrass or bermudagrass, are aerated when it is actively growing, usually anywhere from early June to Aug. 15. “It’s good for the turf and customers like the results,” Ehrenberg said.
“It’s a struggle to fit aeration into our work schedules,” Hall said, noting that aerations are timed from mid to late April through early July. “We’ve had our regular maintenance crews try to aerate along with fall seeding, but too often it’s all they can do to get the seeding done.
“What we plan to do next year is put a crew together just to handle special projects like seeding and aeration,” said Hall. “The cultural benefits to customer lawns are tremendous and our return per hour for aeration is better than for mowing. We like it, customers like it, we just need to figure out how to do more of it.”
The author is a freelance writer based in Lincoln, Neb.
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