Most of the year, an irrigation company looks like any service business: repair calls, a broken head, a valve that won't close, a controller that lost its program, a new zone to install. Then the season turns, and every customer needs the same visit within the same few weeks.
In spring, systems need starting up: turning water back on, checking for freeze damage, setting the controller. In fall, where freezing is a risk, they need winterizing, often by blowing out the lines with compressed air. These visits are short and nearly identical. The constraint is the calendar: everyone wants it done, and in the fall there's a deadline set by the first hard freeze, not by you.
Short visits make drive the main cost
When a visit takes an hour or more, the drive between jobs is a modest share of the day. When a blowout takes 20 or 30 minutes on a typical residential system, the drive can be as long as the work. That changes what good scheduling means. For burst-season work, the question isn't how to fit long jobs into a day. It's how to keep each leg as short as possible.
A worked example: one tech, one blowout day
Illustrative numbers only. Say a residential blowout takes 25 minutes on site and the tech works 9 hours (540 minutes).
The work didn't get faster. The legs got shorter. For a few weeks a year, that's the difference between finishing before the freeze and running out of season. Run the same arithmetic with your own on-site time, leg times and season length.
Plan the burst before it arrives
Burst seasons are a capacity planning problem first. Before the season opens, you can answer:
- How many visits do you need to do? Your customer list from last season is a good start.
- How many techs and how many working days? Be honest about weather days and the days when equipment is down.
- What's the realistic visits per tech per day? Use the formula above with your own numbers, not a hope.
If needed visits are greater than techs × days × realistic visits per day, you know in advance that you'll need more people, longer days, an earlier start, or a smaller drive per leg. The last one is usually the cheapest.
Book the season by neighborhood
The surest way to cut the drive per leg is zone scheduling: split your service area into neighborhoods, put each on a calendar of days, and offer customers the days their neighborhood is scheduled. Most irrigation customers care about getting it done before a deadline, not about a particular hour.
A few practices that make this work:
- Publish neighborhood days early. Customers who book early fill the zone days you've set up, rather than picking random days that scatter the route.
- Hold some capacity for stragglers. Every season has customers who call late. Keep a few slots per zone day, or a cleanup day per region at the end.
- Keep repairs off zone days where you can. A repair found during a start-up is a different, longer job. Note it and book it separately unless it's quick, so the route doesn't stall.
- Watch the fall deadline. Start winterizations in the areas that tend to freeze first, which is information you have from past seasons.
Repairs and installs the rest of the year
Outside the bursts, irrigation work looks more like general service: diagnostic visits of uncertain length, repairs, and multi-day installs. The scheduling question shifts back to fitting variable-length jobs around each other and around the drive. If your crews also do lawn and landscape work, see landscaping scheduling. Seasonal open-and-close bursts are also the defining feature of pool service scheduling.
Booking-time feasibility for irrigation
During the burst, each booking should pass the same check: will a tech be in this neighborhood on this day, finishing a nearby visit, with time to reach this one and the next? Outside it, the check is the general one: from where the tech will be after the previous job, does the drive and this job's duration fit before the next commitment?
CrewLink does this check before the slot is offered. It builds live travel time into availability, computing travel from the previous job instead of the shop, and only offers slots a tech can physically reach. Drive time sits next to each job on the dispatch board, which is useful during a burst when legs are a big share of the day. For more on how capacity and drive interact, read how many jobs per day per technician.
What to take away
- Start-ups and winterizations are short visits in a few weeks. Drive per leg decides capacity.
- Visits per day ≈ day length ÷ (visit time + average leg). Shrink the leg.
- Plan the burst before it starts: needed visits versus techs × days × realistic visits.
- Book by neighborhood day and publish the days early.
- Note repairs found during burst visits and book them separately unless they're quick.
Common questions
How do I schedule sprinkler winterizations efficiently?
Split your territory into neighborhoods and assign each to set days, starting with areas that tend to freeze first. Offer customers the day for their neighborhood and keep a few slots for late callers. Keep repair work off those days where possible so the route keeps moving.
How many sprinkler blowouts can one tech do in a day?
Divide the working day by the on-site time plus the average drive between visits. With an illustrative 25-minute visit and 6-minute leg in a 540-minute day, that's 540 ÷ 31, or about 17. Your own visit time and leg times give your real number.
How do I plan irrigation start-up season capacity?
Count last season's customers, estimate working days after weather, and compute realistic visits per tech per day from your own visit and drive times. If the needed visits exceed techs × days × visits per day, adjust before the season: add help, start earlier, or tighten routes.
Should irrigation start-ups be booked as time slots or neighborhood days?
Neighborhood days usually work better for burst-season visits, since most customers care about the date more than the hour. Specific time slots make more sense for repairs and installs, where the customer may need to be present.