It takes a lot of watering and pampering to get a lawn that looks well managed, but who really has time to do all of that? One of the biggest time draws involved in maintaining a lawn properly is watering it, but luckily it’s also one of the easiest things to automate via an irrigation system.
How Much Does an Irrigation System Cost in New Jersey?
The answer to that question, unfortunately, isn’t as simple as we’d all like it be. In NJ you can usually expect a range of about $1.30 to $1.80 per square foot on average, but you may also need to pay a contractor fee, sales tax or the purchase of any necessary permits, which can run up an additional 20-30 percent.
The low end of the range is for relatively simple lawns that don’t require any special equipment to install the system. The high end of the range is a good estimate for lawns that have complex structures or landscaping on them that warrant the use of specialized tools or equipment.
Obviously, irrigation system cost is largely dependent on how large your lawn is, but contractors divide your lawn into zones for the purpose of installing irrigation systems and they routinely charge by the zone.
Even if you’re still on the fence about getting a lawn irrigation system it’s a good idea to send a copy of your lawn’s layout to a contractor so that they can estimate how many zones make up your lawn, though this is something that you’d normally find out when you were getting a quote, so it’s not that necessary.
There’s also a maintenance cost to consider, of course, but that shouldn’t set you back more than a couple hundred dollars a year.
The cost to repair damage done to your lawn at instillation, for example. Well luckily we live in an age where you can install a major system under your lawn without damaging it. So you can forget about any expensive post-instillation lawn repair.
Conclusions
$1.30 to $1.80 is a good starting point for a New Jersey lawn irrigation system, but that should only serve as a rough estimate. To get a more accurate estimation for your irrigation system cost you should arrange a meeting with a lawn irrigation contractor who can install an irrigation system and get a quote from them.