Alpenglow Sprinkler & Landscaping Inc

This is in response to the complaint filed on September 15, 2015 against Alpenglow Sprinkler.The customer called and left a voicemail sometime on August 24th, exclaiming that her grass is dying and she is in need of immediate help. I returned her voicemail a day or two later and it was determined I...

would come out to her rural residence north of US 287 sometime after 9 but by 10 on the 27th of August. I agreed to this scenario regardless that I had a boatload of work already lined up after hearing the apparent urgency of the call.I arrived by 10 the morning of the 27th after having made several wrong turns trying to find her place. Upon arrival she explained to me her problem, namely the numerous dry spots in the yard, the worst of which she pointed out to me. She also was wondering what was going on with the drip system as her plants around the house seemed to be showing signs of extreme drought stress. I asked her where the source of the water was coming from, knowing that this may very well be the crux of her problems, and she showed me the main turnoff that turns the well water supply to the sprinkler system on and off. I took the liberty of affirming that the main turnoff valve for the sprinkler system was a stop-and-waste curb stop valve, a valve that has been illegal to install for longer than the house was old, and I did mention this briefly to the customer but she didn't seem concerned .Upon examination, in that same easternmost valve box was housed the y-strainer for filtration of the water going to the system as well as the  blowout tee for winterizing the lines. I noticed that the blowout orifice had some rusty galvanized parts attached to it. I explained to her that we'll no doubt want to change those out for non-corrosive brass parts BEFORE we attempt to blowout the system as we don't want to risk the possibility of blowing rust into the system. I don't believe I further explained that sometimes pieces of rust can flake off and lodge in sprinkler valves keeping them from shutting off even when the clock deactivates the corresponding station. If too many valves become stuck "on" during the blowout process, there is not enough air pressure or flow generated by the air compressor to effectively blowout the system. This can make the blowout job become a repair job of a sort, trying to locate the valve(s) and repairing them as necessary in order to proceed with the blowout. I told the customer that I would "run" through the system and report back. being a 12 turf zone system it took me about a full half hour to go through the system looking for leaks, clogged and/or crooked heads, and flagging them accordingly. When I was finished looking at the system I was rather surprised to total up 10 or 11 heads that were clogged to the point of becoming useless, and another 4 or 5 heads that were needing desperately to be moved and/or straightened. This rate of failure is highly rare and signaled to me that the filtration system is not performing up to par and may need to addressed before too long. I made sure to mention this to the husband later the next day.I reported back to the customer and showed her the numerous flagged heads and she pretty much just told me to get it fixed. Finally she did inquire if I had any idea how much this job would cost .  Having not put a shovel to the rocky landscape yet and knowing nothing about what parts I may (or in this case may not) find, I had no idea how much this job would eventually cost the customer, and I told her this. I did however tell her that it certainly wouldn't be less than $500 and would most likely be  less than one thousand. She didn't say a thing and I proceeded to go right to work. I mostly replicated the type of head that I found prevalent throughout the system, namely a short throw rotor head. I worked until I ran low on parts as we don't normally install the short throw rotors and stock very few of them in our trucks. I left for our office to restock at about the same time the customer left the residence. I returned after taking lunch and restocking my truck and the customer returned about three o'clock or so. Soon she asked me how things were going and I told her they were going pretty well. I was averaging about one head a half hour, even though the digging was less than ideal and the fittings I found in the ground needed to changed out, as I wanted to be sure the heads were installed at the correct height and would remain plumb, unlike most of the heads on the system.  I did take into account the arc that each rotor I planted had to cover as well as the distance it needed to throw when nuzzling up the rotors I installed, unlike most of the heads on the system. Most all of the original rotors sported a 3.0 nozzle regardless the distance needing to be watered nor the arc that needed to be covered, a "Bozo no-no" so to speak in the eyes of a knowledgeable sprinkler person. I did, however, replace two or three rotors with rotary nozzled popups as at times these are a preferred head to install, particularly when the distance of intended throw is short, and the precipitation rates are similar to the short throw rotors.  Also it was an experiment to see if these might work with the existing filtration system, knowing that zones 11 and 12 were both popup zones and could potentially benefit from a nozzle change of this nature.Sometime around 3:30 or 4:00 she asked me approximately where they were in terms of racking up a bill. I responded that I wasn't exactly sure but that I was at somewhere near $300 at that point in time, with about a third of the heads replaced. she made no comment at the dollar amount and I proceeded to replace some of the remaining rotors that were flagged. I worked fairly late in the day and quit the job site at 5:15 PM telling the customer that I needed to come back the following day to complete the job. Surely she must have realized we'd be close to or even over the $500 perceived threshold at this time with still over a third of the flagged heads remaining needing to be replaced. She didn't hesitate to agree that I could help myself to her garage if she wasn't home when I return the following day. I was glad of the "open" invitation to come back to complete the job as I felt I was on a roll but had several things lined up to do first thing the following day. Also, having found our company on the internet, I assumed that this customer would probably have looked up out rates on our website before calling us out to help with her situation, so I was not worried that I had run over some perceived spending limit. I felt sure she knew approximately "where" we were by the end of the first day with numerous flagged heads left to replace. She seemed perfectly alright with my coming out again the next day.I arrived at the residence at 2:30 PM the following day after taking care of previously scheduled repair work and errands in town. I did not charge the customer for any travel time to get to the job, even though she lives 5 or 10 minutes north of Laporte. We only charged her our normal service call fee for the first half hour of our time on the job the first day there and a small out-of-town fee of $10 to help defray the cost of gas. Otherwise we just charged our normal labor rates, which of course are listed on our website.I changed out the three heads on station 6 that I had flagged the day before and then proceeded to inspect the drip. I found several leaks in the drip station number 13, south and southwest of the house, and one leak on the drip station northwest of the house, all of which I repaired. In the process I also added to the existing drip for better coverage. Then I remembered I hadn't rechecked station two's rotors along the driveway and sure enough I found one more clogged rotor and replaced that one too. By this time the husband was arriving home as it was after 5:00 PM and he and his crew were gathering presumably after a hard day's work. About this time I found out that station 6 had stopped working on the clock so I was unable to check my work and water in the newly dug and replanted sod around the heads with overturned buckets and the zone running. I explained to the client and the husband that this was presumably due to a faulty solenoid. I had spent a good half hour surveying the valve situation and was unable to find a valve box for either stations 5,6 and one of the drip stations (the one that services the SE corner of the house but is not being utilized presently as there are no drip emitters on it to my knowledge). Unable to locate station 6 obviously made it impossible to try to fix.I explained this to the husband as I showed him the station list I was making out for his system to aid in the programming of his clock. I told him that it was preferential to water twice a night two days a week to grow a more healthier lawn and to water as deep as possible, so that is how we programmed the clock. But I warned him by doing so we might be sucking the well dry which is ill advised. I warned him to keep a keen eye out for this possibility. Before we changed the schedule it was coming on virtually two separate days of the week, twice a week for what might be considered half run times. Essentially we were putting down about the same amount of water, just not spread out over as much time. I believed I mentioned to the husband at that time that the drip wasn't programmed to run for a long enough time when I had first arrived so we fixed that on the station list schedule as well as on the clock. I think I  mentioned the three really bad leaks I had found and fixed in his SW and NW planting beds that day, and definitely voiced my concern that none of the drip emitters and sprayers around the water feature in back seemed to be working and he explained that they are on a different system so I left it alone.  I told him of my concern with the filtration system too as it seemed rather odd that so many heads would be clogged. My gut feeling is that the screen mesh has been removed from the filter as it probably clogged often and was a maintenance nightmare. I suggested to the husband that a better filtering system with a self flushing mechanism might be necessary, but that we'd have to look into that when my time freed up some more. With that being said I apologized for not being able to locate and repair station valve number six. I told him I'd be back the following week after I got caught up with my work load to locate and repair that valve. He told me he knew solenoids go out occasionally and he didn't blame me and accepted my offer to return.Less than a week passed and I was able to free up enough time to drive up to and locate and presumably fix that that valve. I arrived at the job site and was  proceeding to set up our valve/wire locating equipment out by the front yard valve box (that houses station valves 1-4 and the easternmost drip valve) when the customer came out in rather a huff. I certainly was astonished to hear that her exclaim that she and her husband didn't think much of my work or my tardy return to fix the valve "that I messed up last week". I actually couldn't believe my ears as I know the customer saw me literally jumping on my shovel to get it to penetrate the ground up there, and in sweltering 90 degree heat! I don't believe she ever really checked the work that I did for her. If she had, she would have noticed how plumb the heads I had replaced for her were, and also at the correct height!As far as the dry patches in her lawn, I noticed most of them were disappearing by the time I returned that second week, so I wasn't in true agreement when she insisted her lawn never looked this bad. In actuality, the deadest part of the lawn is by the main turnoff valve and is most likely the result of a chemical burn. She did accuse me of ruining her system, of somehow sabotaging station number six so I left in a hurry, rather upset by the way she was treating me. I did however return a minute later after collecting my composure to offer to return the clock to its original schedule of running at 4:00 AM and 11:45 PM twice a week as it was when I had first arrived. That was offer was discussed with the husband over the phone and refused so I left.In conclusion I propose we employ an independent sprinkler company unknowledgeable about Alpenglow go up to the former customer's residence and inspect my work. If it is in any way sup-standard Alpenglow will reduce the bill accordingly and pay entirely for this contractor's inspection time. But if my work checks out as I'm sure it will, then I propose the customer pay the bill in it's entirety within ten days of this inspection, as well as the inspector's time.Sincerely Yours, Brad P[redacted]Alpenglow Sprinkler

Dear Revdex.com, RE: Complaint ID# [redacted] September 23, 2015 I reject the response from Alpenglow Sprinkler and Landscaping Inc. Their statement is false. Last May I asked Aspenglow if they had time to turn on my sprinklers.  Immediately the worker arrived with a "boot", put it on the standpipe and said this is $45.00. I refused it, and he did nothing about it. He turned on the valve and from then I didn't watch him. The clock he insisted on changing against my wishes.He also was digging in the yard — I asked what he was doing and he said "I'm moving this sprinkler, it doesn't belong there." Immediately he stopped digging, and left so quickly that he left one of his tools. In August I called for help to have the sprinklers adjusted. Three times I called and they did not answer. The third time I said "please" three times and said they had never sent a bill. Immediately I received a bill with charges for things I never knew took place or asked to be done. Consulting with another sprinkler company I found what had been done and what all the charges were for. I immediately contacted Aspenglow and said I would not pay for anything but turning on the sprinklers for which I originally asked. Because of the Revdex.com, Alpenglow Sprinkler System sent a revised bill which was for turning on the sprinklers and the labor which has been paid and the check has been negotiated. This company needs supervised constantly in order to have the work done honestly. Thank you, [redacted]

A technician from Alpenglow Sprinkler and Landscaping was working on a sprinkler system and was approached by a neighbor from across the street asking the company to fix dry spots in her yard.  Upon turning this system on it was apparent the PVB was leaking and the new customer gave permission...

to replace the Poppet and Bonnet.  After getting the entire system started and running, two heads were found broken and needed to be replaced.  The head in front was spraying the driveway and the customer gave permission to move the head a few feet in order to water the desired turf. As our technician was working, the customer was saying she thought the last guy she hired to do yard work was stealing tools and Christmas lights and complained that when she tried to report it to the police they told her there was not sufficient evidence to press charges.  The technician then talked to the customer about setting her clock to water and which times, so it would be automatic.  The customer insisted on pressing the button to do it manually but still didn't understand how to do so, even after many attempts to explain to her. The issue was left with the customer saying she could barely see at all.  The system was not set to automatic due to the customer's request. Our technician also spoke the customer about buying a Fitrite vacuum breaker protective cover for her PVB because the previously damaged parts were most likely due to the elements and weather.  The customer agreed and the Fitrite was installed. Our technician saw no signs of discontent from the customer upon finishing the job.

This is in response to the complaint filed on September 15, 2015 against Alpenglow Sprinkler.The customer called and left a voicemail sometime on August 24th, exclaiming that her grass is dying and she is in need of immediate help. I returned her voicemail a day or two later and it was...

determined I would come out to her rural residence north of US 287 sometime after 9 but by 10 on the 27th of August. I agreed to this scenario regardless that I had a boatload of work already lined up after hearing the apparent urgency of the call.I arrived by 10 the morning of the 27th after having made several wrong turns trying to find her place. Upon arrival she explained to me her problem, namely the numerous dry spots in the yard, the worst of which she pointed out to me. She also was wondering what was going on with the drip system as her plants around the house seemed to be showing signs of extreme drought stress. I asked her where the source of the water was coming from, knowing that this may very well be the crux of her problems, and she showed me the main turnoff that turns the well water supply to the sprinkler system on and off. I took the liberty of affirming that the main turnoff valve for the sprinkler system was a stop-and-waste curb stop valve, a valve that has been illegal to install for longer than the house was old, and I did mention this briefly to the customer but she didn't seem concerned .Upon examination, in that same easternmost valve box was housed the y-strainer for filtration of the water going to the system as well as the  blowout tee for winterizing the lines. I noticed that the blowout orifice had some rusty galvanized parts attached to it. I explained to her that we'll no doubt want to change those out for non-corrosive brass parts BEFORE we attempt to blowout the system as we don't want to risk the possibility of blowing rust into the system. I don't believe I further explained that sometimes pieces of rust can flake off and lodge in sprinkler valves keeping them from shutting off even when the clock deactivates the corresponding station. If too many valves become stuck "on" during the blowout process, there is not enough air pressure or flow generated by the air compressor to effectively blowout the system. This can make the blowout job become a repair job of a sort, trying to locate the valve(s) and repairing them as necessary in order to proceed with the blowout. I told the customer that I would "run" through the system and report back. being a 12 turf zone system it took me about a full half hour to go through the system looking for leaks, clogged and/or crooked heads, and flagging them accordingly. When I was finished looking at the system I was rather surprised to total up 10 or 11 heads that were clogged to the point of becoming useless, and another 4 or 5 heads that were needing desperately to be moved and/or straightened. This rate of failure is highly rare and signaled to me that the filtration system is not performing up to par and may need to addressed before too long. I made sure to mention this to the husband later the next day.I reported back to the customer and showed her the numerous flagged heads and she pretty much just told me to get it fixed. Finally she did inquire if I had any idea how much this job would cost .  Having not put a shovel to the rocky landscape yet and knowing nothing about what parts I may (or in this case may not) find, I had no idea how much this job would eventually cost the customer, and I told her this. I did however tell her that it certainly wouldn't be less than $500 and would most likely be  less than one thousand. She didn't say a thing and I proceeded to go right to work. I mostly replicated the type of head that I found prevalent throughout the system, namely a short throw rotor head. I worked until I ran low on parts as we don't normally install the short throw rotors and stock very few of them in our trucks. I left for our office to restock at about the same time the customer left the residence. I returned after taking lunch and restocking my truck and the customer returned about three o'clock or so. Soon she asked me how things were going and I told her they were going pretty well. I was averaging about one head a half hour, even though the digging was less than ideal and the fittings I found in the ground needed to changed out, as I wanted to be sure the heads were installed at the correct height and would remain plumb, unlike most of the heads on the system.  I did take into account the arc that each rotor I planted had to cover as well as the distance it needed to throw when nuzzling up the rotors I installed, unlike most of the heads on the system. Most all of the original rotors sported a 3.0 nozzle regardless the distance needing to be watered nor the arc that needed to be covered, a "Bozo no-no" so to speak in the eyes of a knowledgeable sprinkler person. I did, however, replace two or three rotors with rotary nozzled popups as at times these are a preferred head to install, particularly when the distance of intended throw is short, and the precipitation rates are similar to the short throw rotors.  Also it was an experiment to see if these might work with the existing filtration system, knowing that zones 11 and 12 were both popup zones and could potentially benefit from a nozzle change of this nature.Sometime around 3:30 or 4:00 she asked me approximately where they were in terms of racking up a bill. I responded that I wasn't exactly sure but that I was at somewhere near $300 at that point in time, with about a third of the heads replaced. she made no comment at the dollar amount and I proceeded to replace some of the remaining rotors that were flagged. I worked fairly late in the day and quit the job site at 5:15 PM telling the customer that I needed to come back the following day to complete the job. Surely she must have realized we'd be close to or even over the $500 perceived threshold at this time with still over a third of the flagged heads remaining needing to be replaced. She didn't hesitate to agree that I could help myself to her garage if she wasn't home when I return the following day. I was glad of the "open" invitation to come back to complete the job as I felt I was on a roll but had several things lined up to do first thing the following day. Also, having found our company on the internet, I assumed that this customer would probably have looked up out rates on our website before calling us out to help with her situation, so I was not worried that I had run over some perceived spending limit. I felt sure she knew approximately "where" we were by the end of the first day with numerous flagged heads left to replace. She seemed perfectly alright with my coming out again the next day.I arrived at the residence at 2:30 PM the following day after taking care of previously scheduled repair work and errands in town. I did not charge the customer for any travel time to get to the job, even though she lives 5 or 10 minutes north of Laporte. We only charged her our normal service call fee for the first half hour of our time on the job the first day there and a small out-of-town fee of $10 to help defray the cost of gas. Otherwise we just charged our normal labor rates, which of course are listed on our website.I changed out the three heads on station 6 that I had flagged the day before and then proceeded to inspect the drip. I found several leaks in the drip station number 13, south and southwest of the house, and one leak on the drip station northwest of the house, all of which I repaired. In the process I also added to the existing drip for better coverage. Then I remembered I hadn't rechecked station two's rotors along the driveway and sure enough I found one more clogged rotor and replaced that one too. By this time the husband was arriving home as it was after 5:00 PM and he and his crew were gathering presumably after a hard day's work. About this time I found out that station 6 had stopped working on the clock so I was unable to check my work and water in the newly dug and replanted sod around the heads with overturned buckets and the zone running. I explained to the client and the husband that this was presumably due to a faulty solenoid. I had spent a good half hour surveying the valve situation and was unable to find a valve box for either stations 5,6 and one of the drip stations (the one that services the SE corner of the house but is not being utilized presently as there are no drip emitters on it to my knowledge). Unable to locate station 6 obviously made it impossible to try to fix.I explained this to the husband as I showed him the station list I was making out for his system to aid in the programming of his clock. I told him that it was preferential to water twice a night two days a week to grow a more healthier lawn and to water as deep as possible, so that is how we programmed the clock. But I warned him by doing so we might be sucking the well dry which is ill advised. I warned him to keep a keen eye out for this possibility. Before we changed the schedule it was coming on virtually two separate days of the week, twice a week for what might be considered half run times. Essentially we were putting down about the same amount of water, just not spread out over as much time. I believed I mentioned to the husband at that time that the drip wasn't programmed to run for a long enough time when I had first arrived so we fixed that on the station list schedule as well as on the clock. I think I  mentioned the three really bad leaks I had found and fixed in his SW and NW planting beds that day, and definitely voiced my concern that none of the drip emitters and sprayers around the water feature in back seemed to be working and he explained that they are on a different system so I left it alone.  I told him of my concern with the filtration system too as it seemed rather odd that so many heads would be clogged. My gut feeling is that the screen mesh has been removed from the filter as it probably clogged often and was a maintenance nightmare. I suggested to the husband that a better filtering system with a self flushing mechanism might be necessary, but that we'd have to look into that when my time freed up some more. With that being said I apologized for not being able to locate and repair station valve number six. I told him I'd be back the following week after I got caught up with my work load to locate and repair that valve. He told me he knew solenoids go out occasionally and he didn't blame me and accepted my offer to return.Less than a week passed and I was able to free up enough time to drive up to and locate and presumably fix that that valve. I arrived at the job site and was  proceeding to set up our valve/wire locating equipment out by the front yard valve box (that houses station valves 1-4 and the easternmost drip valve) when the customer came out in rather a huff. I certainly was astonished to hear that her exclaim that she and her husband didn't think much of my work or my tardy return to fix the valve "that I messed up last week". I actually couldn't believe my ears as I know the customer saw me literally jumping on my shovel to get it to penetrate the ground up there, and in sweltering 90 degree heat! I don't believe she ever really checked the work that I did for her. If she had, she would have noticed how plumb the heads I had replaced for her were, and also at the correct height!As far as the dry patches in her lawn, I noticed most of them were disappearing by the time I returned that second week, so I wasn't in true agreement when she insisted her lawn never looked this bad. In actuality, the deadest part of the lawn is by the main turnoff valve and is most likely the result of a chemical burn. She did accuse me of ruining her system, of somehow sabotaging station number six so I left in a hurry, rather upset by the way she was treating me. I did however return a minute later after collecting my composure to offer to return the clock to its original schedule of running at 4:00 AM and 11:45 PM twice a week as it was when I had first arrived. That was offer was discussed with the husband over the phone and refused so I left.In conclusion I propose we employ an independent sprinkler company unknowledgeable about Alpenglow go up to the former customer's residence and inspect my work. If it is in any way sup-standard Alpenglow will reduce the bill accordingly and pay entirely for this contractor's inspection time. But if my work checks out as I'm sure it will, then I propose the customer pay the bill in it's entirety within ten days of this inspection, as well as the inspector's time.Sincerely Yours, Brad P[redacted]Alpenglow Sprinkler

The issue has already been resolved.  Alpenglow sent a revised bill including the Spring Fire-up and the parts to fix the broken poppet and bonnet and the customer has paid her bill in full.