With the economic downturn plenty of tradies are feeling the pinch and the retic and turf business is no exception.
In an unregulated industry anyone can pick up a shovel and lay pipes, or roll out lawn.
But not everyone can do it well. (I don’t often write posts like this, but lately I’ve seen some really dodgy work and people taken advantage of, so here’s a case in point.)
Today I was called to a job where retic and turf had been installed badly – really badly… The sprinklers didn’t pop up or spray because the one station was overloaded, the sprinklers sat above the level of the turf (see image below and above) meaning they would get mowed over easily, the turf had been laid at the wrong level and when the operator ran out he just left a gap.
My job was to get water on the lawn because after the retic install nothing had worked and the client had been handwatering their new lawn.
The major problem was that the installer had simply gone down to Bunnings and bought a stack of high volume sprinklers and installed them all on one station. On a system that delivered 30l/min he had installed sprinklers using 50l/min. The solution was to either split the system into two stations or use a different kind of nozzle. I ended up using Toro precision nozzles and the system now works much better. It still isn’t perfect because the sprinklers sit above the level of the grass and they aren’t positioned correctly, but this would have been an added expense to remedy.
The lawn was laid on a surface level with the height of the retaining wall rather than being 25ml below and sitting flush with it. In the pic above you can see that the installer ran short of lawn so left a 200ml gap between lawn and retainer… The lawn will never sit correctly because it was originally installed too high.
But it was cheap…
The retic cost around $700.00 and I would estimate that if we did the job (correctly) it would be an $1100.00 job As it was with a bill for $340 today to get it working the client paid almost that amount but still has sprinklers sitting above surface and poorly located. The lawn was also done much cheaper than I would have done it, but the result shows the difference.
Its always important to get a fair price for the work you are getting done, so be sure to get a couple of quotes and be sure to check the specifications of the work. I can guarantee you Brighton Reticulation will rarely be the cheapest, but we do promise to do the job correctly and to honour any warranties with no fuss. When you get a quote always ask to see samples of a person’s work and be sure that they are up to the task!
This is the Brighton Reticulation Blog and our main site can be found <a href=”http://www.brightonreticulation.com”>here</a> For service or advice with the issues in this post call Andrew on 0400044236, or email us <a href=”mailto:brightonreticulation@gmail.com”> here </a>