Boston, MA
IRRIGATION / SPRINKLER ESTIMATING.

## Irrigation Estimating in Boston Is Not a Year-Round Game Boston's climate compresses your install season into roughly five months. The ground freezes by December and doesn't reliably thaw until April. That means you are quoting a full season's work inside a narrow window — and slow estimates cost you jobs. Estimate.Pro gets you from job walkthrough to a sendable bid in 8 minutes. That is not a marketing number. It is the median time contractors on the platform record from first measurement to a bid the client can sign. ## What Makes Boston Irrigation Bids Complicated **Freeze protection is not optional.** Every residential and commercial system in Greater Boston needs a properly spec'd backflow preventer and a winterization plan. Clients ask about it. Your bid needs to address it explicitly — zone count, head count, backflow model, and blow-out access. Estimate.Pro's irrigation scope builder includes freeze-protection line items by default so nothing gets buried in a change order later. **Water authority tie-ins vary by municipality.** MWRA (Massachusetts Water Resources Authority) serves the core metro but Dedham, Norwood, Waltham, and other surrounding towns operate their own water departments, each with its own tap fee schedule and backflow testing requirements. You need to know which authority governs the site before you price the meter tie-in. Estimate.Pro lets you save municipality-specific cost workspaces so your Newton quote and your Somerville quote pull from different baseline numbers. **Soil conditions in the basin vary sharply.** Areas close to the Back Bay and South End sit on fill. Rocky glacial till shows up frequently in the northern and western suburbs — Belmont, Winchester, Woburn. Both conditions affect your trench labor hours. The app lets you adjust labor multipliers per job so your estimate reflects what the ground is actually going to cost you. **Permit requirements in Boston proper.** The City of Boston Inspectional Services Department requires a plumbing permit for any irrigation system connected to a potable water supply. That permit pulls a licensed master plumber or journeyman of record in many cases. Budget that into your overhead before you submit. ## How Estimate.Pro Works for Irrigation Contractors Walk the property. Use the AR measurement tool on a supported device to capture zone boundaries, head placements, and run lengths. On unsupported devices, camera-based measurements are marked as estimates so you know what to verify on-site. Either way, you have dimensions in the system before you leave the driveway. The app generates a scope of work from your walkthrough inputs — zone count, head type, controller spec, backflow preventer, valve boxes, wire run, and winterization access. You review it, adjust quantities, and confirm material costs against your saved workspace. Hit send. You are not retyping the same line items for every job. You are reviewing and correcting, which is a fundamentally different workflow. ## Pricing That Fits a Seasonal Business Irrigation contractors in New England run lean in the off-season. You should not be paying for estimating software during the five months you are barely bidding. Estimate.Pro has a free forever tier — no credit card required, no expiration. When your season ramps up and volume demands more, Pro is $39 per seat per month. Elite, at $79 per seat per month, adds Stripe Connect invoicing with 0% platform fee and invoice exports. If you run a crew with multiple estimators, Crew is $399 per month flat for the whole team. On the Free tier, Stripe Connect transactions carry a 3% platform fee. On Pro and above, that drops to 0%. ## Stop Leaving Spring Jobs on the Table The calls start coming in March. Clients who got slow responses last year call three contractors this year. If you are the first to send a clean, detailed bid, you win most of those jobs on price alone — not because you are cheapest, but because you look organized when the other guys still haven't called back. Estimate.Pro is built for the 25 trades that do this work, including irrigation contractors. The scope logic, the line items, and the cost structure are specific to your trade — not adapted from a generic construction template. Sign up free. Run a real bid. See if 8 minutes is accurate for your workflow.