Irrigation Repair and Sprinkler Startup Pricing Calculator
Price a spring sprinkler startup per zone, or a mid-season irrigation repair call, from your own labor rate, parts, trip charge and job minimum. Every money field starts empty.
How this is calculated
The quote is a straight build-up from minutes you enter. Two things behave deliberately: task minutes are per technician and the tech count multiplies them, and drive time is never billed on its own. It lands in your cost because you pay for it either way, while the only thing billed for showing up is the trip charge you set.
startupMin = setup + zones x perZoneMin + backflow + controller (startup visit only)
repairMin = SUM(qty x minutesEach) + faultFinding
onSiteMin = startupMin + repairMin + extra
techHours = onSiteMin / 60 x techCount
labor = techHours x chargeRate
partsCost = SUM(qty x partCostEach) + fittings
parts = partsCost x (1 + markup)
subtotal = labor + parts + tripCharge
visit = max(subtotal, jobMinimum)
tax = visit x taxRate
paidHours = techHours + driveHours x techCount
cost = paidHours x costRate + partsCost
margin = (visit - cost) / visit
capacity = floor(windowWeeks x daysPerWeek x crews x visitsPerDay)Worked example, the one the tests pin. A one-tech spring startup on an eight-zone system: 10 minutes to charge the system, 8 zones at 4 minutes, 10 minutes on the backflow assembly and 8 on the controller is 60 startup minutes. Two spray heads at 12 minutes, one rotor at 18 and 18 minutes of fault finding is 60 more, so 120 minutes on site, or 2.00 tech-hours. At a 90 charge-out rate that is 180 of labor. Parts cost 9, 9, 26 and 6 of fittings, so 50 at cost and 60 with a 20 percent markup. Add a 45 trip charge and the visit prices at 285 before tax. With a half-hour round trip the visit consumes 2.50 paid tech-hours, so it returns 114 per paid hour.
Where the pre-filled numbers come from, and where they do not. The only numbers this tool ships are minutes: 4 minutes a zone on the sweep, and 12 / 18 / 45 / 35 / 60 minutes for a spray head, a rotor, a valve, a lateral break and a controller swap. They are scoping conventions in editable boxes, stated so the arithmetic on this page is inspectable, and they are not a published benchmark, a survey or a market rate. Every currency box starts empty for the same reason: no regulator or trade body publishes a defensible price for this work, so the tool will not invent one.
New heads change the run times. Swap a nozzle or a head and the zone's precipitation rate moves with it, which means the schedule you programmed at startup is now wrong. The tool flags that as soon as a head quantity goes in. Re-derive the minutes in the irrigation run time calculator, and if you changed the layout rather than just the part, check the throw overlap in the sprinkler head spacing calculator before you leave the site.
The margin check is all-or-nothing. Without a cost per tech-hour the labor half of the job cost is unknown, so reporting a margin off the parts line alone would flatter every quote, and the block simply does not appear. Your machine share of that cost, the truck and the compressor you are not using on this visit, comes from the equipment cost per hour calculator.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent.
Two of the three irrigation visits, and why the third is missing
An irrigation account bills across three visits a year, and they are three different pricing problems. The spring startup is a per-zone sweep with a fixed opening routine around it. The mid-season repair call is a trip charge plus parts plus the labor to fit them. The fall winterization blowout is neither: it is a compressor-sizing problem, where the volume of air is set by zone flow and the pressure ceiling by the pipe material, and getting it wrong damages the system.
This page prices the first two. The third stays where it belongs, in the irrigation blowout calculator, which sizes the machine before it prices the stop. Nothing on this page models air volume, pressure ceilings or purge cycles, and nothing here should be used to quote a blowout.
Who may sell any of the three is a separate question, and in at least one state it is not the contractor board that answers it. TCEQ licenses irrigation in Texas as a trade of its own, and its list reaches selling, servicing and repairing a system rather than installation alone, so the Texas landscape irrigator license guide is the one to read before a lawn route starts quoting startups and repair calls there.
Every money field starts empty on purpose
Search for what to charge for a sprinkler repair and the results are homeowner cost pages quoting each other. Follow their citations and there is nothing underneath: no regulator, no trade body, no published survey that sets a defensible price for a head, a valve or a startup visit. Under this site’s cite-or-omit rule that means the tool ships with none of them, and every currency box opens blank.
The only pre-filled numbers anywhere are minutes: the per-zone sweep time and the per-unit repair times for heads, valves, lateral breaks and controllers. They are stated so the arithmetic on the page is inspectable, they sit in editable boxes, and they are a scoping starting point rather than a benchmark. Time your next five visits and replace them.
The sweep is the startup, and the zone count is the sweep
On a startup, the fixed routine is small and the sweep is most of the visit. So the quote is built as fixed minutes plus zones times minutes per zone, and the zone count comes off the controller rather than out of the air. The moment you switch the tool to a mid-season repair, the sweep is dropped from the quote entirely rather than silently carried, the same way the blowout is absent from this tool altogether.
Repairs are counted on both visit types, because most of what a startup finds is a repair. Each line takes a quantity, an editable minutes-per-unit and what the part cost you, then the parts total carries whatever markup you set.
New heads invalidate the schedule you just programmed
This is the coupled side effect the page flags out loud. Replace a head or a nozzle and the zone’s precipitation rate changes with it, which means the run time that used to deliver the right depth now delivers the wrong one. The controller you programmed during the startup is, as of that repair, wrong. Re-derive the minutes in the irrigation run time calculator before you leave the site.
If the repair changed the layout rather than just the part, the throw overlap needs a second look too: spacing that worked for the old head can leave dry arcs with the new one. The sprinkler head spacing calculator is the check for that, and it is cheaper to run in the truck than to re-visit on a callback.
Drive time is paid whether or not you bill it
Startups and repair calls are short stops with real distance between them, which makes windshield time the line that decides the week. The tool keeps the two halves apart: the trip charge is the flat amount you bill for showing up, and drive hours are tracked as paid hours that land in your cost regardless. That is what the per-paid-tech-hour figure measures, and the tool says so when drive hours are booked with no trip charge behind them.
The margin block is all-or-nothing for the same reason. Without a cost per tech-hour, the labor half of the job cost is unknown and a margin computed off the parts line would flatter every quote, so the block stays hidden until you supply one. The truck-and-machine share of that number is not a guess either: the equipment cost per hour calculator derives it from what the asset actually costs you to own and run.
Everything runs in your browser: no account, no email gate, nothing stored or sent. Estimate only, not a binding quote.