Sprinkler Blowouts Expected To Begin On September 20, 2021

We hope to be starting sprinkler blowouts on Monday, September 20 as long as everything falls into place as we have it set up to do. It will not be without difficulty, however.  We are in need of one more person to keep all four machines on the road this year.  The plan was to purchase another machine this year but decided against it knowing would be difficult in finding a technician to run the additional machine.

Jesse, Jacob, and our new guy will be starting on Monday, but unless we have another tech hired by that time there will only be two machines out the first day while Jesse trains Jerry on the job. Most have been able to work fine on their own after just one day of training, so on Tuesday Jerry would be out with the “Green Machine.” I am interviewing someone on Wednesday for the remaining tech position.  If he works out, we can have three machines going on Monday, four on Tuesday, and then three again on Wednesday.

Thursday the 23rd Jacob will be leaving for Texas to visit a friend and will return on Monday the 27th.  His vacation time was scheduled long before we knew that pressurized irrigation was going to be shut down early this year.

Even with three people and one being gone for a week I estimate we should be able to get 400 or so blowouts completed before our usual start date which is around the 5th of October each year.  I say this hoping we don’t get a lot of procrastinators on irrigation that do not sign up early.  If you don’t have water, there is no reason to put it off.  Get signed up!  The price is the same as last year.  You can sign up here: Sprinkler Blowout Form

We do have several loose ends to tie up this week before we can start on sprinkler blowouts.  I will be rebuilding an old electric hose reel with mostly new parts for Jesse’s machine.  He never had a reel on his machine because of time constraints of getting it ready, so I am going to make sure it is done for him this year.  I then have to wire in a deadman’s switch and get him about 150 feet of hose and fitting to get it ready to go. We also have to replace the glow plugs in the “Green Machine” because on cold mornings it takes forever to get it started.  Once it gets warmed up it runs without issue all day.

I still have to update the stats page for the blog as well as our website and get a schedule going.  Most of the pressurized irrigation requests we have received thus far are in Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, and the Boise 83709 zip code, so that is likely where we will start.

We pick up lots of new customers each year, and this year we are proud to add the Basin School District in Idaho City.  We will be blowing out the sprinklers at the pre-school, elementary school, middle/high school, and football field.  There is also the possibility of other connections in the area as well.

I am looking into a group chatting program, or a group of some sort where I can send out just one notification each night easily, and then reference our blog for more information.  If anyone has an idea on that please let me know!

More updates later.  Thanks to those reading our blog.