There's two ways to do that. You can either charge time plus materials or per item pricing. It's better for newer technicians to charge by the hour, because you don't know how long a lot of tasks will take you. More experienced companies can build a "price book" that has per-item pricing. In my area, and I'm not quite the top priced company, I charge $120 per hour plus materials. And all my parts are marked up 20-50% to account for all the time spent acquiring and stocking parts. The truth is, I use a hybrid model. Most items like changing a rotor or rebuilding or replacing a valve, replacing a timer, etc., I give a firm price for. Replace a 4" rotor is $40 for instance. But tracking wire or finding valves or fixing leaks, I charge time plus materials, and give them exact times and detailed invoices.
@@Proirrigationtraining Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense to charge hourly for wire tracing because its hard to determine how long it will take to find the broken wire. By the way, I did invest in a wire tracer to help me trace wire. But even with the tracer I can seem to find where the spit is. The previous person working on the system placed portable nodes to run the valves in the island where the wire was split.. But they dont seem to ever turn on. I would like to find the wires and get them connected to the main irrigation controller. Do you have some wire tracing videos or some expert advice on how to find the split ?
@@mixingreen There's another tool that maybe you can rent somewhere called a Pulser. I don't own one myself, usually i can find the break with a tracker. But sometimes you need more. Once you mark your wire path with your tracker, you hook up the Pulser and walk it down the wire path. There's a needle on the Pulser frame that will point to the break. Warning though, it will find every single nick or kink in the wire as well as the break.
Great video! Trying help my father start his own irrigation company very useful info.
Good luck with that!!! for real, I think that's always exciting to start a new business!
After the $79.00 . how much do you charge for any repairs needed?
There's two ways to do that. You can either charge time plus materials or per item pricing. It's better for newer technicians to charge by the hour, because you don't know how long a lot of tasks will take you. More experienced companies can build a "price book" that has per-item pricing. In my area, and I'm not quite the top priced company, I charge $120 per hour plus materials. And all my parts are marked up 20-50% to account for all the time spent acquiring and stocking parts. The truth is, I use a hybrid model. Most items like changing a rotor or rebuilding or replacing a valve, replacing a timer, etc., I give a firm price for. Replace a 4" rotor is $40 for instance. But tracking wire or finding valves or fixing leaks, I charge time plus materials, and give them exact times and detailed invoices.
@@Proirrigationtraining Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense to charge hourly for wire tracing because its hard to determine how long it will take to find the broken wire. By the way, I did invest in a wire tracer to help me trace wire. But even with the tracer I can seem to find where the spit is. The previous person working on the system placed portable nodes to run the valves in the island where the wire was split.. But they dont seem to ever turn on. I would like to find the wires and get them connected to the main irrigation controller. Do you have some wire tracing videos or some expert advice on how to find the split
?
@@mixingreen There's another tool that maybe you can rent somewhere called a Pulser. I don't own one myself, usually i can find the break with a tracker. But sometimes you need more. Once you mark your wire path with your tracker, you hook up the Pulser and walk it down the wire path. There's a needle on the Pulser frame that will point to the break. Warning though, it will find every single nick or kink in the wire as well as the break.
@@Proirrigationtraining I think I saw a pulser video b4. Im gonna look into getting one. Ty