Rising gas prices and economic volatility come up in daily conversations, leaving many business owners, including irrigation contractors, wondering, “How will this impact this year’s irrigation season?” and “What adjustments will I need to make?”
“My big concern is oil prices right now,” said Raymond Graber III, CLIA, director of irrigation and water management at True North Outdoor, based in Kansas City, Kansas. “Between shipping and the fact that 90% of irrigation parts are petroleum-based on some level, I’ve got a bad feeling that later in the late spring, early summer, we’re going to see some price hikes.”
That volatility creates a difficult dynamic for irrigation contractors who try to balance pricing with customer budgets.
“I can replace the head for $10 today, but come July or August, I might have to charge $20 for it,” said Graber, who also serves on the Irrigation Association Scholarship Working Group. “It puts a bad taste in their (customer’s) mouth about what we do.”
Graber noted that modest increases like 3%-5% can be managed, but when prices rise by 15%, 20% or 25%, that’s where he starts to worry and where customer pushback tends to increase.
At the same time, the impact of multiple major East Coast snowstorms earlier this year may affect commercial irrigation budgets. The money for snow removal came from landscape budgets, explained Jason Cooper, the irrigation manager for GreenView Partners based in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“That is a challenge for service work right now, but installation projects are different because they come out of a different budget line,” he said.
Where are homeowners planning to spend in 2026?
According to a poll of 2,000 homeowners, nearly half (43%) plan on renovating their landscaping, and (28%) plan on adding a deck or patio to their property. Irrigation installations, upgrades and renovations are likely to fall into those two categories of home spending this year.
“Surprisingly, this year residential is actually a little more optimistic than commercial is for me,” said Graber. “We’ve got quite a few people working on upgrading to smart technology systems.”
As more people invest in their homes, they’re also looking for ways to make those investments more efficient and cost-effective over time.
From conversations with homeowners, Graber said he is not finding economic anxiety to be directly driving this trend. Instead, it’s the result of years of education finally taking hold.
“A lot of the things we’ve been trying to educate customers on is smart technology and that we don’t just turn water on and let it run,” he said. “We want to water properly for the landscape that you have. I think customers are finally starting to catch up to that and see their water bills.”
What are commercial customers saying?
Commercial clients are scrutinizing every dollar, according to Cooper and Graber.
“People are really nailing down what’s a necessity, what has to get done and how can we most effectively manage our irrigation systems to get through a year where the budget was spent on snow cleanup,” Cooper said.
While not snow-related, Graber is seeing a similar trend: “We’ve got a handful of commercial customers that are more wary right now with the economic climate. They’re only fixing irrigation issues, things that are stuck on, broken pipes, or things that are obviously wasting water. But they’re not looking into upgrades.”
Cooper added that despite budget pressures, he has not seen clients reduce irrigated areas, abandon zones or irrigate less. Instead, customers are asking how they can be more efficient with their irrigation.
“Capital projects that were already budgeted to come out of a different capital expenditure budget,” he said. “All of those are still moving forward, so I’m not seeing any market trend on that yet.”
One area that has shown strong demand this year is increasing interest in technology, specifically cloud-based management and remote-control options.
“People are still extremely interested in cloud-based management and irrigation management practices,” Cooper said. “Our clients really still love knowing that they can reach out to us to suspend irrigation if they’re having events or there are big weather events.”
