Technology is like a mushroom – generally, the main spore produces countless side spores. Take the smartphone technology, for example – from it sprang businesses that exclusively design cellphone covers; businesses that designed add-ons like pop-ups for grips, selfie sticks and camera tripods to hold them steady; refurbishing sites to replace those cracked screens; and cloud-based storage sites to hold all those photos you’ll never use again. Then the app stores went wild, and that feral spore is more prolific than COVID-19 variants – with no end in sight. Then, of course, it was easy to take that mobile smartphone and make it your personal radio, your personal talk show line-up, your personal hay market report – your personal yoga lesson format, for cripes’ sake.
That mushroom effect, however, spawns some really useful businesses, like Sprinkler Head Rebuilders of Buhl. The original irrigation technology boom, with pivots, wheel lines and hand lines, offered an opportunity to fix those elements that plugged, wore out or broke – and that’s what Waive Stager does at the business today.
“This is my conversation starter,” Stager says, as she points to a basket of odds and ends – some more odd than others. “These are things we find in sprinklers that are broken or plugged that the water has pushed into the line or the head – you wouldn’t believe everything we find.”
The basket contains rocks (half the size of an average fist), mollusk-like shells, broken drain plugs, a rubber gasket disk (rolled up to fit the size of the pipe), odd pieces of PVC pipe, animal skulls and skeletons, walnut shells, a whole peanut, brass chunks of metal (likely from a gate or ball valve) and a bottle cap. The larger items come from end guns on pivots. “What usually gets caught in the impact heads are snails, mice, lizards and snakes,” she says.
“If there’s one lesson here,” Stager says, “it’s [this]: Clean up after yourself. Don’t think just because you’re in a field it’s OK to throw out trash from your pickup or tractor cab. It all eventually ends up in the irrigation system.”
But irrigation technology has changed since 1981 – the year the shop opened. The impact sprinkler heads aren’t used on many pivots anymore, which have gone to the dropped-head systems for more water efficiency (although manure water in these heads plugs them more easily). And the company who made the highest-quality impact head (Nelson, which is still used on hand lines and wheel lines) has now moved away from brass impact sprinklers, yet farmers and ranchers still bring those heads in for repair when parts wear because the newer, cheaper heads don’t last as well, and the repairs are cheaper than the newest, cheaper-quality heads.
Waive Stager demonstrates the action of a Nelson sprinkler head, one of the top-of-the-line options for quality. Photo by Lynn Jaynes.
“Our business has changed over the years,” Stager says. “We don’t stock as many off-the-shelf parts as the larger stores but have refocused on what we do best – and that’s repairing and rebuilding equipment.”
The business, with eight employees, also rebuilds valve openers, valve elbows and T’s, and repairs pivot end guns. Although they used to rebuild primer pumps, Stager says the industry doesn’t use a lot of primer pumps anymore. Each employee has a specialty area of work, but some have dual talents. Stager says it’s harder to compete currently with a workforce earning $15 to $16 per hour with benefits such as at a fast-food restaurant, and she has some trouble finding new employees.
The store has repair pickup and delivery stations for farmers from Aberdeen on the eastern edge to Caldwell on the western edge. The pricing structure is based on repair required, with graduated services. For instance, a bearing assembly rebuild (tested with pressurized water, adjusted and warrantied) is a basic service, while a new arm, spring and fulcrum pin plus bearing assembly rebuild (also pressurized water tested, adjusted and warrantied) is a higher-end repair. Stager says, “But then sometimes someone brings in something that was just knocked out of adjustment or needs to be blown out because it’s plugged, and I’ll only charge a dollar for that. I always encourage people to at least take the head off and look for things that likely plugged it before bringing it in.”
When a head blows off, Stager says the common area for wear is in the bottom bearing assembly. If the washers are worn through, then metal is grinding on metal, and that creates a scenario for a blown head. Another common wear point (because of the drive arm rotating on a stainless-steel pin) is where the inside diameter of the top assembly gets wider and sloppier. “We drill it out, press in a bushing and tighten it back up,” she says.
As long as there are sprinkler systems, even though the products continue to mushroom and develop, there will always be a demand for businesses to handle repairs.
See more of this business at Sprinkler Head Rebuilders or find out more about Waive Stager’s more recent passion at www.magicatsrescue.org (as evidenced by the company she keeps in her office).
