Irrigation winterization: a simple fall offer for people you already mow

Here is the short answer: if you mow in a place where the ground freezes, the people you already mow need their sprinklers blown out in the next few weeks, and most of them have not booked anyone yet. It is a short visit with a date attached, it fits on the streets you already drive, and it hands you the spring start-up on the same ticket. Sell it in early October, one text per customer, with a price you set before you send it.

This was planned as a spring irrigation start-up post. In October the honest version is the fall side of the same job, so we flipped it. The start-up still matters, because it is what you book while you are standing at the valve box.

1. Decide if blowouts belong on your truck

A blowout is not mowing with a different machine. You are pushing compressed air through someone else’s plumbing, and it is easy to break things if you rush. Before you sell one, check three things:

• Your climate. Blowouts are a northern and mountain-state job. In much of the Deep South and Florida, most homeowners just set the controller to off or rain mode, and a blowout headline will read as a sales pitch.
• Your state rules. Some states license irrigation work. Texas, for example, licenses irrigators through its environmental agency (TCEQ). Look up yours before you advertise anything with “irrigation” in it.
• Your insurance. Ask your agent whether your policy covers damage to a customer’s irrigation system. A cracked backflow preventer is a few hundred dollars, and you do not want to find out on the phone in April.

If any of those is a no this year, refer blowouts to a local irrigation company and ask them to send you their mowing referrals in return.

2. Get the equipment and the method right

The Colorado State University Extension fact sheet on winterizing home sprinkler systems is the clearest public source, and it is worth reading once in full. The parts that matter for a crew:

• Volume matters as much as pressure. CSU’s rule is to divide a zone’s gallons per minute by 7.5 to get the cubic feet per minute of air you need. Too little air rides over the water and leaves it sitting in the low spots.
• Cap the pressure. CSU puts the ceiling at 80 PSI for rigid PVC and 50 PSI for flexible black polyethylene pipe. Sprinkler maker K-Rain says to stay at or below 50 PSI, period. If the nozzle rating is lower, use that.
• Short cycles, one zone at a time. K-Rain says not to run any zone more than about a minute at a time, and to repeat until only a fine mist comes out. CSU recommends two short passes per zone rather than one long one.
• Never blow air into dry pipe, and never through the backflow preventer. Connect downstream of it, keep a zone valve open whenever the compressor is running, and stop once a zone is clear. Air in dry pipe heats up and can damage rotor gears.

Wear eye protection and keep people off the heads while the air is on. That is in the K-Rain instructions too.

3. Price it flat, with a minimum and a zone add-on

Public 2026 price guides are fairly close. Lawn Love puts the national average for sprinkler winterization at about $60 to $145. Thumbtack lists about $68 to $239. One 2026 guide gives a typical four- to eight-zone system at about $75 to $130, with a common structure of a flat base price for the first six or eight zones and roughly $3 to $10 for each zone after that. Those are other companies’ ranges, not BuyersRadar numbers. Use them to check your quote, not to set it.

Lawn Love puts the national average for sprinkler winterization at about $60 to $145.

Build your own the way you build a leaf price, from minutes and miles. The leaf pricing guide uses the same method. A few rules keep the quote clean:

• Pick one structure, flat with a zone add-on, and keep it for the whole route so you are not doing math in the driveway.
• Set a minimum that covers the compressor, the setup and the drive, even on a three-zone yard.
• Write what is included on the ticket: number of zones, a quick look at heads, controller set to off. Repairs are a separate line.
• Price the spring start-up now and offer both visits together, so the customer says yes once.

4. A worked example with made-up numbers

These numbers are made up and rounded to show the math. They are not a result. Say you charge a $90 flat rate covering up to six zones, plus $6 for each extra zone. A seven-zone yard is $96. A ten-zone yard is $114.

Now say twelve customers on your Tuesday route have sprinklers, and most of them sit on four streets. If each blowout takes around 20 to 30 minutes on site, those twelve fit into one long day without new drive time, because you were going to be on those streets anyway. Price the spring start-up for the same twelve, and you have two dated days of work booked before the first frost, one in October and one in April. That route density is the whole reason this fits a lawn crew.

5. Sell it with one text, to your own route

Most published guides say to finish blowouts a week or two before the first hard freeze, which a Tom’s Guide piece this month defines as several hours at 28°F or below. In many northern states that is mid-October to early November. Pick your dates from your own area’s typical first-freeze date, not a national article. Then send each customer one text:

“Hi Dana, it’s Chris with the green trailer. I’m blowing out sprinklers on Elm and Oak the week of Oct 20. Want me to do yours while I’m there? It’s $90 for up to six zones. I can book the spring start-up for April on the same visit.”

Send it once, then one follow-up a few days later if they did not answer, the same rhythm as the estimate text that books. Put the yeses on a single list sorted by street, not by the order they replied. If a neighbor walks over while the heads are spitting mist, that is a real lead, so have a price ready.

6. Book the spring visit before you leave

The start-up is where this turns into a route asset. Before you pull off the property, note the controller brand, the zone count, the valve box location and any heads you saw that were broken or tilted. Put the April date on the ticket, and send the customer a one-line note: “Spring start-up booked for the week of April 13, I’ll text two days before.” In April, that start-up visit is also the natural moment to ask whether they want weekly mowing again, which is how a spring job turns into a weekly route.

What not to do

• Do not crank the compressor to “clear it faster.” Too much pressure is how heads and fittings crack.
• Do not run air through the backflow preventer or into a zone that is already dry.
• Do not sell blowouts in a warm climate where no one needs them.
• Do not promise “no freeze damage, guaranteed.” Say what you did, zone by zone, on the ticket.
• Do not wait for a freeze warning to sell it. By then the irrigation companies are already booked and your customers are calling them.
• Do not cold-blast a whole ZIP with a blowout special. Start with your own route and their neighbors.

A blowout pairs well with the leaf jobs still on your schedule and the rest of the winter work list. If you want a short list of new homeowners in one ZIP to approach once spring start-ups begin, the free sample shows what a pack looks like, and the contact page is the fastest way to ask for one.