Making a wise choice when hiring an irrigation repair service is important. You want to be able to feel confident that you’re getting the full value out of your investment in the service. That means finding a company that is truly skilled at the work they do and care about getting you the best possible results.
Of course, here in North Texas, where irrigation is vital to the health of your lawn and landscape, you certainly have a lot of companies to choose from. There are so many companies that choosing one might feel a bit daunting.
To help narrow your options, you should take time to do a little research about any sprinkler repair service in North Texas you’re considering hiring. We’ve rounded up some questions to ask before hiring an irrigation repair service so that you can begin that process.
The following questions will help you to vet any lawn sprinkler repair company that you might be considering hiring.
This is a question that most people don’t think to ask but that is really important.
In the state of Texas, irrigation licensing is a requirement—but that doesn’t mean everybody follows through with it. If a lawn sprinkler repair company fails to get its license or doesn’t keep it up to date, you run the risk of having to pay for costly repairs or even fines down the road.
At Grassperson, we use Certified Irrigation Technicians and are licensed by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Our Certified Irrigation Technicians are well-trained and solely focused on tune-ups, audits, and repairs.
By law, a sprinkler repair service is supposed to hang their license in their place of business and you can see ours framed and hanging in our office. Every time that we update it, we are prompt to replace it in the frame and we text a photo or email a photo to anyone that inquiries about seeing it. We also have our license irrigation number on our website.
You also want to get a sense of what kind of experience a lawn sprinkler repair company has before hiring them.
You’d be surprised how often companies get into irrigation services even though they don’t have much experience. There are a lot of “jack of all trade” types of businesses out there where the same workers provide all services for the company.
But irrigation is pretty specialized and it’s really important that you choose a company with well-trained and certified technicians.
At Grassperson, our certified irrigation technicians are trained and completely focused on irrigation systems.
This is just another way to gauge professionalism and experience. Company uniforms and branded vehicles can help give assurance that this is an experienced individual coming from a reputable company.
Of course, how often do you hire a professional service only to have someone show up in a pick-up truck in their regular clothes? It’s happened to us when hiring other home services so we’d assume it’s likely happened to you before, too.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it just doesn’t do much to instill confidence in consumers. Ultimately, you want to be able to rest assured that you’ve hired an expert in the field and that they are coming from a highly experienced and reputable company.
With companies out there doing irrigation work that really shouldn’t be, you might want to also consider asking for referrals. This is just another way to vet a lawn sprinkler repair company before hiring them.
Of course, this does mean picking up the phone and calling some other homeowners to ask questions. We understand that a lot of people don’t really want to do that. That’s why you can also use online reviews to vet a company and still see what others have to say about them.
You don’t even have to ask a lawn sprinkler repair company directly about their reviews. You can just go online and find them for yourself.
Third-party, online reviews help provide you with honest information from actual customers who have already worked with a company you might be considering. If the company you’re looking into has made a lot of mistakes or isn’t really looking out for homeowners’ best interest, that’s going to show in the reviews.
Our recommendation is always to look for companies that have at least a 4.5-star rating or higher.
But you also want to look at the comments and see what people have to say (as well as how the company responds). This is one of the best ways to get a sense of what it will be like to work with the company ahead of actually hiring an irrigation repair company.
Ultimately, there are some things that irrigation companies may do to really turn off potential customers. Upselling them on products or services that they don’t really need is a big one. Many of these companies are incentivized to try and upsell you.
A potential red flag for this is if an irrigation company offers free inspections. The only reason that they would do this is to try and recoup the cost of their time by finding things that need to be repaired or upgraded, even if they aren’t really necessities.
At Grassperson, we charge for irrigation inspections and our irrigation technicians are not incentivized to try and sell you extra work or tell you that you need a whole new system when you really don’t.
We take a very holistic approach to irrigation repair and we want our customers to understand how their systems work.
In fact, you’ll find that we will spend a lot of time educating homeowners about their system and even how to look for or handle certain things themselves. We may talk about ways that you can save money but we’ll provide honest and transparent information about what’s best for you and your property.
Finally, if you’re getting close to hiring an irrigation repair service or maybe you’ve already made that decision, then you might also want to ask the company what you can expect about the process when they arrive.
They should be able to walk you through what an irrigation repair involves and anything that you should know before they arrive to begin.
At Grassperson, we are a company that prides itself on good and thorough communication with customers. We believe that you should be well-informed and kept in the loop of what’s going on. Frankly, it’s also why we write blog articles like this one. Though there are some companies out there that would prefer you weren’t in-the-know, we have always valued transparency and honesty.
Hopefully, by asking some of these questions of any lawn sprinkler repair company that you are considering hiring, you will feel confident that you’re narrowing down your options to only the best companies.
By taking the time to do this research and going through questions to ask before hiring an irrigation repair service, you can begin to gain peace of mind that you’re going to get the most out of your investment by hiring a reputable company that has your best interest at heart.
When you make the right choice, you’re truly able to let go of your worries and know that your property is in the best hands.
Stop worrying about your irrigation system and leave it up to a pro who knows exactly what your Northern Texas property needs. Get a free quote, then you can enjoy the best lawn on the block!
