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Mr. Korff, I would like to know your thoughts please on this commentary regarding your industry. Thanks in advance. TR

CRUSH THE SPRINKLER GUILD!

I suspected as much! What the lady at the Home Depot called the “sprinkler repair cult” is an emerging guild seeking privileges and regulations from the government. That means a supply restriction, high prices, or another do-it-yourself project. But there is a way around it.

I first began to smell a rat when the automatic irrigation system on my front yard needed work, but had unusual struggles in trying to find a repair guy.

The first place I called informed me that they could accept no more clients. Clients? I just wanted a new sprinkler thing, for goodness sake. I don’t want to be a client; I want to be a customer. Is there no one who can put on a new sprayer or stick a screwdriver in there or whatever it needs?

Nope, all full.

The next call was not returned.

The next call ended with the person on the line fearfully saying that they do landscaping but will have nothing to do with sprinklers or “automated irrigation systems”. Umm, ok.

The next call seemed more promising. The secretary said they had an opening on the schedule in three weeks. Three weeks? In that period of time, my yard will be the color of a brown paper bag!

The next call failed. And the next one. And the next. Finally I was back to the off-putting secretary. I made the appointment but the guy never came. Fortunately, in the meantime, a good rain came, and then at regular intervals for the whole season, and I was spared having to deal with this strangely maddening situation.

Why all the fuss? We aren’t talking about brain surgery here. These are sprinklers, little spray nozzles connected  to tubes connected to a water supply. Why was everyone so touchy about the subject?

Why did all the power seem to be in their hands, and none in mine? Must I crawl and beg?

Above all, I wonder why, with most all lawns in new subdivisions sporting these little things, why oh why are the people who repair them in such short supply?

Little did I know that I had stumbled upon the real existence of a most peculiar thing in our otherwise highly competitive economy: a guild.

It had all the earmarks. If you want your nails buffed, there are thousands of people in town who stand ready. If you want someone to make you dinner, you can take your pick among a thousand restaurants. If you want to buy a beer, you can barely go a block without bumping into a merchant who is glad to sell you one. None of that is true with sprinkler repair.

What does a guild do? It attempts to restrict service. And why? To keep price as high as possible. And how? By admitting only specialists, or supposed specialists, to the ranks of service providers, usually through the creation of some strange but largely artificial system of exams and payments or whatever.

Guilds don’t last in a free market. No one can blame producers for trying to pull it off. But they must always deal with the defectors.   Even the prospects of defectors can cause people who might not otherwise defect turn and attempt to beat others to the punch. There is just no keeping a producer clique together for long when profits are at stake.

There is also the problem of an unlikely: high profits attract new entrants into the field. They must either join the guild or go their own way. This creates an economically unviable situation in a market setting that is always driving toward a market clearing rate of return.

Further evidence of the existence of a sprinkler guild came from the checkout lady at home depot. I was buying a sprinkler head and she mentioned in passing that they didn’t used to carry these things, and the decision of the manufacurer to supply them in retail got some people mighty upset. She spoke of the sprinkler repair people as a cult that should be smashed!

Now, does this guild really exist or is it an informal arrangement among a handful of local suppliers? As best I can tell, the name of the guild is the Irrigation Association.They are active in:

*Providing a voice for the industry on public policy issues related to standards, conservation and water use on local, national, and international levels

*Acting as a source of technical and public policy information within the industry

*Raising awareness of the benefits of professional irrigation services

*Offering professional training and certification

Uniting irrigation professionals, including irrigation equipment manufacturers, distributors and dealers, irrigation system designers, contractors, educators, researchers, and technicians from the public and private sectors.

Catch that? Certification. Unity. Standards! Public policy. These are all dangerous words, that come down to the same result; high prices and bad service.

Why should anyone become certified? “Prestige and credibility among peers and customers”; “Professional advancement opportunities”; “Enhances the professional image of the industry, your industry”.

I thought I needed a sprinkler repairman but these people want me to hire a Certified Landscape Irrigation Manager, a CLIM. How do you become a CLIM? Well, you have to send in $400 plus a resume’ that includes an overview summary of how you plan to meet the program criteria.

Two examples of project development include:

-System design objective

-System budget estimate

-Water source development

-System design drawings: hydraulic, electrical, detail drawings, pump station

Project Specifications

-General specification

-Material specification

-Installation specification

-Pump station

Two system audits or evaluations to include:

Audit

-System performance(uniformity)

-Base schedule

-Recommendations for improvement

Evaluation

-System performance(uniformity)

-Hydraulic analysis

-Electrical analysis

-Grounding

-Water source

-Product performance

-Recommendation for improvement

Two construction and/or construction management projects:

-Site visit reports

-Drawing of record

-Final irrigation schedule

-Punch lists

Of course they are working with federal, state, and local governments. They want restrictions of every sort. They want their own Turf and Landscape Irrigation Best Management Practices or BMP to be the law of the land. You can read more about it by going to IA.

How hip-deep are these people in government? It’s hard to say. But I’m guessing the local developers, landscapers, builders, and others are intimidated by all these and are reluctant to challenge their monolopy.

So thank goodness for hardware stores! They are working to bust up this vicious little guild, to the benefit of the consumer and everyone else. It means having to stick your fingers in the mud and reading instruction manuals and the like; but sometimes the defense of liberty means having to get your hands dirty a little bit!

     

       Interesting observation. I have a slightly different take on this issue, however.

First of all, fresh water is a scarce resource, and as consumers in the United States we do not pay anything approaching the costs of obtaining it. Not directly anyway. The true costs for water are paid through other forms of taxation.

Now, as a consumer paying very little for water, it may not be apparent to you that there is a shortage of the stuff and that your government pays a lot of money to get it. Thus, our government is very interested in ways to reduce those costs-far more than the consumer is anyway. So it stands to reason that the consumer with an irrigation system really doesn’t care too much about scarcity or costs. We should have a free market for water and irrigation supplies.

This all sounds great to me. I support the free market system. However, if we’re going to go in that direction, I think it would be important to first make the consumer pay market costs for obtaining water in the first place.

So, because consumers don’t directly pay market costs for water and are therefore not interested in conservation, it becomes necessary for the government to look out for conservation. And it is precisely this government interest and consumer disinterest in conservation that creates a need for water use regulations. And since we have regulations, we need certifications. And since we have certifications, we have professionals. And since we have professionals, we have high costs.

That seems like a very complex solution when it would be so simple to just ask consumers to directly pay the costs of the water in the first place. So the consumer will be interested in conservation and empowered to conserve water. No more need for restrictions, regulations, etc… unless the consumer wanted them.

So let’s think this thing through a little further. Suddenly, you’re paying 5 times more for water. You own an irrigation system. Tell me, do you even want to water your lawn anymore? If so, what price are you willing to pay to insure your irrigation system functions properly? If you have heads that aren’t functioning properly, do you go down to the hardware store and buy the cheapest replacements? As a consumer, would you be interested in finding a better irrigation system that costs 3 times as much and saves 70% of the water you would normally use with a cheaper system?

Sorry, I don’t know of such a system because the conditions we are discussing don’t exist. We don’t have a free market for water, so nobody has ever had to design such a water saving system. In such a market, fewer irrigation systems would be sold(bad for Rainbird) but they would be higher quality and cost much more(good for Rainbird). Either way, companies like Rainbird will be around as long as water is a scarce resource.