Irrigation system maintenance can keep the phones ringing, especially as older installs age.
Johnny’s Turf Management has been in business for 35 years and has offered irrigation system installation since the early 1990s. The company, based in Jacksonville, Florida, provides lawn maintenance, landscaping and irrigation services to both residential and commercial customers. Today, 11 people work at Johnny’s Turf Management, which has an annual revenue between $750,000 and $900,000.
“Most of the stuff we do is repair work for big outfits,” says John Day, owner. “We have a customer with over 2,000 rental homes that we do all their service work. They call us when they know something’s broken.”
Lawn & Landscape spoke to Day about best practices for offering irrigation maintenance service, common questions from customers and tips on pricing. Here are some of his suggestions:
How often should you be servicing heads and nozzles?
“At least twice a year, we recommend them being flipped on and gone through,” Day says.
This recommendation is for customers with a clean water supply – typically city water. If the customer has well water, this may need to be done more often. “If you get into a drought situation, wells start picking sand up and the water table drops,” Day says.
How does the age of a system impact maintenance needs?
Irrigation heads can begin sticking out higher than the turf over time.
“It depends, again, on the water (source). That’s got a lot to do with it, but five years probably (when) heads begin to pop up,” Day says. “That head is popping up and down, and up and down, and up and down. Over time they wear, just like anything else.”
Other frequent reasons for maintenance calls include failed valves, stuck valves, broken heads and problems with rain sensor functioning.