How many sprinkler blowouts can one crew do in a day?

Updated 2026-10-08

Short answer: divide your productive minutes in the day by the minutes one stop takes. A stop is (zones × minutes per zone) + setup and paperwork + drive time. With the illustrative numbers below that is 9 stops per crew per day, but the right numbers are yours, not ours, so time your own crew for a week before you promise a season's worth of customers a date.

The formula

Minutes per stop = (average zones × minutes per zone) + setup and teardown + average drive time to the next stop.
Stops per crew per day = productive minutes in the workday ÷ minutes per stop, rounded down. Productive minutes are the day minus lunch, fuel, loading the truck and the calls that run long. Be honest here, it is the number that moves the answer most.
Crew-days needed = total systems ÷ stops per crew per day, rounded up.
Calendar days = crew-days ÷ number of crews (compressors) working, rounded up, then counted forward over the days you actually work.

A worked example (illustrative numbers, not a benchmark)

Say you have 300 systems, an average of 6 zones, 3 minutes per zone (a cited guide runs each zone for about two minutes or until no water leaves the heads, so 3 leaves room to move between zones), 10 minutes of setup, teardown and paperwork, 15 minutes of driving, and 7 productive hours (420 minutes) per day.

Minutes per stop: 6 × 3 + 10 + 15 = 43.
Stops per crew per day: 420 ÷ 43 = 9.77, so 9.
Crew-days: 300 ÷ 9 = 33.3, so 34.
With two crews working five days a week: 17 working days, about 3.5 weeks.

Change one input and the answer moves: cut driving from 15 minutes to 8 by grouping jobs by neighborhood and the same crew fits 10 stops a day, which takes about three crew-days off the season. The free season days calculator does this arithmetic for you, with a start date and an optional finish-by date.

What sets the real number

Compressor capacity. One trade-press guide calls for a compressor rated 80 to 100 CFM for a mainline 2 inches or smaller, and says a small shop compressor will not supply enough air. If your compressor is undersized, minutes per zone goes up.
Zone count varies a lot. Use a weighted average from your own customer list, not the typical home. Large properties and small condos belong in different groups.
Drive time is the lever you control. Grouping stops by area (see how to group sprinkler service calls by neighborhood) usually moves it more than working faster.
Weather. Blowouts bunch up before the first hard freeze. Plan a buffer of days rather than a perfect schedule.

Turning it into a schedule

Sort customers into areas and give each area a day.
Cap each day at your stops-per-crew number times your crews, so a day never silently takes on 14 stops.
Give customers an arrival window rather than an exact time, and cap each window too (how to stop overbooking arrival windows).
Order each day's stops to cut backtracking, and check that no stop's window starts before you can plausibly get there.

Doing it in Sprinklerly

Sprinklerly lets you create a service area for a date as a circle on a map with arrival windows and a capacity per window. A property outside the circle cannot be booked, and a window cannot be booked past its capacity, even if two people try to book the last slot at the same moment. A dispatcher can then open the day, reorder its stops by hand and see real drive time between legs (route planning is on the Growing Crews plan), with warnings for overlapping windows or a leg without enough travel buffer. Ordering is manual: Sprinklerly does not optimize routes automatically. Sprinklerly is free during early access for contractors who sign up by December 31, 2026 (no credit card). Planned prices at general availability are $79, $149 and $249 per month, locked in for early-access accounts.

Start free Free during early access for sign-ups by December 31, 2026, no credit card required.

Common questions

How many sprinkler blowouts can one person do in a day?

There is no industry-standard figure we can cite. It depends on zones per system, minutes per zone, setup and drive time. Use the formula on this page with your own timings.

How long does a sprinkler blowout take per zone?

One cited trade-press guide runs each zone for about two minutes or until no water comes out of the heads, and says not to keep blowing air through a zone once it is dry. Add your own time to move between zones.

Sources

Landscape Management: step-by-step winterization of an irrigation system, read 2026-10-08

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