I have no idea how we pulled it off, but we managed to get to everyone on our route yesterday in the 83709 and 83642. There were a few we couldn’t do because of either not being able to find the valve boxes, or running into a locked gate. There was a property on my route that was under new ownership that had 12 zones. The previous owner had left instructions as to where to blow it out, and his method of doing so. I immediately found the directions suspect, but I tried it anyway against my better judgement and it didn’t work. The owner and I walked the property for a while so I could figure it out and decided to do it my way based on experience that comes as far back as Moses and it worked fine. However, I ended up being there an hour instead of what should have been 20 minutes. Add a few system issues in from some of the other properties on my route, and it’s a big surprise that I was able to finish it at all. I estimate for every system problem I run into whether it be going on a treasure hunt for valve boxes that should be uncovered, to bad blowout ports, or no blowout ports at all, I lose time for 1-2 blowouts. I received a rather nasty text yesterday because my estimation of when I was going to be at her property was off by a day or two from my estimation. Situations like this is the reason why we don’t make appointments, and why I hate putting out a schedule that I am going to have to change nearly every day, which gets me yelled at even again for not showing up when expected.
We average about 200-250 sprinkler blowouts completed within a 7 day period. Currently we have around 500 which means about 18 days to finish everything on our list. Again this changes depending on the number of cancellations we get compared to the number of new ones that come in daily.
Jesse is taking over for me today in the 83709 so I can get back on the paperwork, emails, etc., while Justin works the 83642. Jesse has one blowout to do today where the water shut-off and valves are all under the house. My back and knees won’t cooperate with me going into crawlspaces, but Jesse is quite used to it from our daily repairs we do all summer.
Here are the maps of the work areas:
Thanks for your blog. I know we are all concerned/anxious about it getting colder even though it takes a long time to cool the ground.
I have one idea that you might consider that would give us a little more information. I fully understand why you don’t post an actual schedule, I have no problem with that. In your blog could you post the present and upcoming zip codes in the order your going to do them, and post the number of blowouts per zip. Then I could look and knowing that you do about 200 a week I could figure approximately when you will get to me, with no commitment on your part. Maybe you implement this next year when you have time to figure it out.
Thanks for your hard work. Your & your workers have always been great to me.
You don’t need to reply to me.
Hey Mark, I have tried that before with little success because the schedule never worked out like it was supposed to. As for how many we have in an area that has been posted for years. Click on “Sprinkler Blowout Stats” under categories, or type in “2018 sprinkler blowout stats” in the search bar. It is fairly accurate, except for newest requests that haven’t been inputted yet, or cancellations removed. It gets updated in real time as I make changes behind the scenes. It also shows what percentage of the area is contained, which helps us decide on where to go at a particular time. Zip codes with a lower percentage are a higher priority than those with a higher percentage, although we will still get to them all if they stick with us. Even knowing we do about 200 a week or so won’t really help you know when we will get to a particular job site because they aren’t done in order. Zip codes with a large amount will be done where the highest concentration of jobs are first so that we can get the numbers down faster without a lot of drive time.
Any idea when you’ll get to my other house on Lewisburg? Don’t see it on your current maps. It is off of Cloverdale and Camas.
We are working in the 83709 and 83642 this week, so will finish all but the very newest requests before we move on to get to areas that have customers waiting a long time
Hi! I’m in the 83642 zip code and am just wondering if my system has been blown out yet. I signed up the beginning of October. I thought I read on the blog you are done in this zip, so I was just checking. Thanks!
Not yet, but we will get to it within the next 2-3 days
Hi, when do you think you will be back to 83716?
I will be making some changes to our routing in the next few days. I may end up in the 83716 sooner than I figured. I forgot that I was in the 83716 the first time before I was in the 83704 and 83713, so routing could definitely change. Keep an eye on the blog for updates in the next few days.