Irrigation may come first in the name of Ohio-based Rain One Irrigation & Drainage, but both services are equally critical to the business’s success. Blair List launched the contracting company about three decades ago while looking for a career change from golf course management. Five years after opening, he added drainage as a core service.
“The two complement each other well,” he says. “If you’re a standalone irrigation company and get into a rainy season, your business will be down. If you get into a hot, dry season, your irrigation is up. It is the same with a wet year; drainage is up, and irrigation is down. So, there’s a balance that you don’t get with standing on one or the other.”
The majority of the company’s drainage projects are located on quarter- to half-acre lots that require about 200-300 feet of French drain. Crews can install about 600 feet daily, so they can complete two jobs each day.
The average drainage project for Rain One includes replacing existing conductor lines under the grass or landscape, but the installation of French drains and downspouts is the “secret sauce” that makes drainage work for the company, according to List. The company also offers a service that sends a crew out with a sewer jetter and a camera that a crew member sends up the lines to identify if and where a problem exists.
“Most people need a French drain in their side or back yard, not the front yard,” he explained. Water in those areas often has nowhere to go, so his team designs systems that guides the water downhill toward ways it can be effectively drained elsewhere.
While the average job is the system of 200-300 feet described above, List’s company has been called in to mitigate drainage issues on unique properties.
A unique property
In early 2024, the owner of an estate property in the Columbus, Ohio, area hired List to address excess water in the backyard. The more than 5-acre home featured a mix of turf, landscape and hardscape areas. After large rain events, water pooled, undermining the hardscapes. As a result, the bluestone walkways were sinking below grade. An improperly installed existing drainage system was not large enough to handle the volume of water that collected in the area.
“The additional pressure from the excess water was heaving the blue stone walkways and putting additional pressure on the swimming pool and the hardscapes,” he says.
List’s crews can renovate an existing system on many jobs, but this property required a completely new design. One of the issues was a significant elevation change from street level to the area where water collected. The street level was substantially higher than the backyard, and the elevation change included steep areas, requiring a sump pump to lift the water 18-20 feet up and over a hill so that it was directed into a creek on the other side.
“Every one of the 6-inch lines in the system goes into an outdoor holding tank, and the sump pumps it back over a hill,” he says. His team is fond of using a 2-horsepower submersible sump pump with a 2-inch outlet that can flow a lot of water.
The drainage system includes 2,800 feet of pipe, a combination of 4-inch and 6-inch lines, perforated and solid drainpipe. The crew installed 4-inch perforated pipe with fabric cloth that was installed at an elevation with 3/8 round gravel for backfill because it has proven to have the most capacity to flow water through it quickly, allowing for the best backfill and water infiltration into the pipe, List explains. The 4-inch perforated pipe is tied into a 6-inch inch SDR-35 pipe that has the capacity to handle free stall whereas other pipe classes do not.
“French drains work, but they take time to work,” he says. “The water has to penetrate the subsoil to get it to the drain. Once we get it to the drain, we want to move that out as quickly as we can.”
One of the issues Lists’s crews encounter on drainage jobs is utilities such as gas lines. Unlike irrigation systems, where pipe elevation is adjusted to work around utilities, the elevation for drainpipes must be consistent to maintain proper flow.
“This does become one of the biggest challenges when we get to a site,” he says. “We have to have all those utilities exposed and figure out how we are going to install the project.”
This project did not require working around the utilities, but crews had to cut and repair wiring for outdoor entertainment speakers and sections of an irrigation system. The property posed a unique challenge: A crane was the only option for placing trenchers on-site where they needed to be and relocating excess excavated dirt off-site.
“Cranes cost $300-$400 per hour, and homeowners either understand that or they don’t. These homeowners did,” he says. “We were able to make it work so we didn’t have to have the crane there all day.”
Selling drainage
Creating a quote for this estate property required a team effort. List has a formula for standard drainage jobs that makes it simple to quote a job on the spot. He has established price breakdowns for every 100 feet installed for cookie-cutter projects.
On this job, he and three staff members worked on the proposal. They had their materials and crane costs dialed in, so it came down to how long they thought this project would take because they had no history to work from due to the unique nature of the project.
“We put at least a 50% buffer on labor in the deal,” he says.
Including the sizable buffer on labor became critical once the crews started digging. It’s not uncommon that elegant compounds like this one have masonry stone walls with gas lamps on top. In Ohio, the footers average a depth of 3 feet, so that’s what List used when figuring up a cost to dig under for the drainage. But when they got into it, the footers were much deeper and required boring.
“We had to have a concrete boring company come in and drill 6-inch holes into the footers,” he says. “This was one unknown, and fortunately, it didn’t hurt us too badly. The labor markup helped us overcome the cost of boring. Overall, we came pretty close to the cost of what we thought it would be. “You’ve got to go in high with the mentality that if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t.”
The project, which involved a five-person crew took about six working days to complete.
List has invested in SEO and online advertising that leads prospects directly to the company website, where potential clients complete an online drainage issue assessment. The users’ response to those questions triggers recommendations for replacing components like downspouts or recommends a service call or the installation of a French drain.
“That’s what develops all of our leads for what we’re doing,” he says. “They go through an estimate request form to have an estimator come out to their specific site.”
Most are straightforward, but with the estate project, the estimation process and sales conversation were more intensive, as was the proposal process. On this project, List consulted an engineer to confirm that the design he had in mind was appropriate.
“I just wanted to make sure our thinking was right,” he says. “We don’t need an engineer’s stamp for these projects, but having an extra set of eyes on a project like this that we don’t do every day was helpful.”
List says the biggest differentiator he uses to sell customers on his drainage services is summed up in the tagline “We put your landscape back the way we found it.” Customers aren’t faced with regrading or replacing disturbed areas.
“Our entire method is for correction, so we bring a sod cutter in to strip down the area, use a trencher for excavation and installation, regrade, and put the customer’s sod back down,” he says. “Our goal is that when we leave there, you don’t even know we’ve been there. That’s the magic part for us. There’s obviously a price tag for that because the landscape cleanup can end up being more than the entire project, but customers understand the value of not having to deal with it themselves.”
A more even business flow
Rainfall significantly impacts the profitability of an irrigation contractor’s business. Much like snow removal, Mother Nature can make or break your revenue for the year. Adding drainage services offers contractors another option to balance out revenue flow during weather periods that impact one service line or another.
Adding drainage services offers contractors another option to balance out revenue flow during weather periods that impact one service line or another.
“One thing I’ve learned is that drainage isn’t a service that works equally well everywhere,” he says. “It’s driven by the soil types in your area. You’re looking for places that have heavy clay like we have here in Ohio. I would have thought it would be a great service in Michigan, but Grand Rapids is all sand.”
