Lawn Sprinkler System Repair

[AustinBat]

Apparently the company that installed ours several years ago is gone. I think there are some heads that need adjusting - anyone know a good, honest company that will only do what is necessary? Thanks!

 

[jimmyjazz]

Good timing . . . in about 5 minutes, I am going to write a check to Andy's Sprinkler & Drainage for God knows how much money to cover a massive resetting of my sprinkler system. It came with the house, and wasn't all that well designed to begin with. Over time, some heads had inched out of the ground, etc., and so they reset and moved maybe 50 heads or so, replacing a few. At $95 an hour (3 workers), the cost seems "reasonable", but it took 5 hours, so including replacement parts . . . yikes.

Their quality of work appears to be outstanding.

 

[AustinBat]

Did you get any kind of quote? Our system is working well except for several heads, so I certainly don't want to spend $500 on it.

 

[jimmyjazz]

They ended up coming in at about 92% of their estimate. It took almost an hour -- at $95/hour -- to walk the system and figure out what might need repair. Based on what they did, I'd guess the rest of the job came in somewhere around $25/part on average, with some parts needing to be adjusted, some needing to be moved, and some actually needing to be replaced (or moved and replaced).

Scale accordingly.

 

[halsteadfrost]

Funny, I used Andy's as well not too long ago and had the same experience. They seemed to do pretty good work, but it took longer than I expected. They were always busy, though, and at $95/hr at least they had three guys working on it (as opposed to plumbing rates).

For my job they had to locate some zones that weren't working, dig holes and correct the issue, they moved one sprinkler head, fixed some broken ones, and corrected the direction of some others (they were spraying into walls). I think it took 5 hours, and came in around $800 after parts were added.

EDIT: AustinBat, if you're worried about them tacking on added costs, you could just tell them explicitly what to do. I think they have a one hour minimum. Then if they don't use the whole hour, they will tell you they can use the remaining time to check out your system in more detail. If you don't want them to do that, just pay them for the time and parts they used to fix what you asked them to. If you do ask them to check out the rest of the system, thats when they'll find everything else that's wrong......