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Landscaping cost HOW MUCH? You sure you didn't add an extra 0 on that quote?
- Thread starter Soapbox Killer
- Start date
I recently got some estimates but didn't do any work. Shit is not cheap.
OP
OP
20K is looking like the bare minimum I've been seeing.
I said fuck it. Nope. Ain't getting a pool neither.
yeah thats good to fucking know. Man... the more u learn.
I need gravel too for driveway.
Yup landscaping is premium around here. You're lucky if you can even have somebody come by and give you a quote. They won't even bother if they sense that you are "shopping" for quotes.
you might even be able to get mulch dropped off at your house through your township. it tends to be a bit cheaper too
Gravel is fairly cheap too unless they have to deliver a long way to get to you. 6-7 tons should do a standard driveway and you can probably get it for somewhere around 400 bucks delivered and they have the truck that spreads it for you. That was way cheaper than I expected.
Man I never thought of that! I live in a township too I'll have to look into that next year. Thanks!
sounds like what i was thinking. We live in the bay area too... FML lol
I'm not specifically dragging you in my comments; this is just the generic "man, landscapers are a ripoff" type of response I would give out to anyone. But yeah, the suburbs with a front and back yard for 2000-6000+ sq ft of property is a big difference from the little garden bed and 20sq ft of grass you owned in a downtown townhouse. And the quick fundamentals of shovel/wheelbarrow/chainsaw/rake will get you part of the way there, but for big projects that involve actual machines like bobcats and excavators, or a stone-cutting saw, hedge trimmers, tamper, dump trailer, and a million other pieces of kit to make the job actually take an hour rather than a day, it all adds up.
When I started working there in my first year of university I was shocked at the prices we were charging too; I was like "if I only make $10 an hour, and my boss lets say makes triple that amount, where does all the money go?" But I wasn't factoring in rentals of gear we didn't have, fuel for the equipment, expertise and training for the guys who used the equipment, disposal costs, and the whole "make a profit for the business and not just work at cost plus salaries" thing. Definitely gave me a big appreciation for what things actually should cost as opposed to "pfft, that doesn't look hard; I could do it."
I think that's the wrong read. In most cases I think a lot of people are shocked at how much materials cost.
In my case, I had already researched how much it would cost to do the work myself - one dumpster for concrete is $550. If I go over the one dumpster I would be looking at $1100 for disposal.
The guy who came out and quoted me said it would take him a day and cost $3200. So lets say the dumping costs this guy $1000, thats $2200 for a days worth of labor. Thats 4 dudes for 8 hours - 32 hours. $2200/32h = $68.75/hour for labor. Thats a shit-load of money for manual labor. It's not that manual labor is beneath me, it's not, its that I want to pay a fair price. When I worked as a laborer during the summers of college 10ish years ago I was making $10/hour. Most people don't make $70 an hour.
It's worth it to me to save the $2200 and bust my ass for a weekend with my brother and a buddy and buy them beers and food so i think i'm gonna go that route.
I did landscaping for a high end company that did a lot of work in the suburbs of NYC when I was 18. The owner of the company taught me a lot and explained some of the secrets/methods used. Much like painting ( my father was a house painter for 40 years), landscaping is a job most people hate to do and would easily pay a premium to avoid. And mulch is the easiest way to make money. He would buy a massive amount for cheap and then charge crazy amounts for it. We did one mansion and the mulch (and labor to spread it) was almost 100k, in 1994. granted, it was a large property, but still.
Mulch can be had for free from a lot of towns, particularly after a storm. Towns often collect all the fallen trees and branches, chip it, and then have to get rid of it. We often got truck loads for free after a storm.
Tree removal is something else though and 99% of the time you are better paying an insured company to do it. So many things that can go wrong and be very costly, not to mention life risking
Mulch can be had for free from a lot of towns, particularly after a storm. Towns often collect all the fallen trees and branches, chip it, and then have to get rid of it. We often got truck loads for free after a storm.
Tree removal is something else though and 99% of the time you are better paying an insured company to do it. So many things that can go wrong and be very costly, not to mention life risking
Funnily enough, the last guy I paid fucked up the job because he was working on days that were too hot to work on. Cement was setting virtually instantly, and by the end of the second day he got heatstroke and what little skill he had went out of the window.
Workers with decent skill are few and far between. I actually wish I lived in the South East as everyone I know down there seems to use top notch Polish workers. I have no issue paying for a good job (I can earn more working than I pay for others to do the job), but I've had extremely bad luck with contractors (only 2 out of ~20 I've used have been any good).
Good work is expensive. We built a new house recently and skipped the pool (they are a PITA) and opted to invest heavily in nice landscaping instead. It made sense to invest early because nice landscaping will always add to a home and the sooner you get it done the more time it has to grow with the home. Spent around $28,000 which included some drains and a retaining wall.
I used to maintain everything in our first house until the last few years before we moved. The best service I ever used for about .5 acres was $260 a month. They came weekly and did everything including fertilizer, lawn pest control, weed control, pruning, edging, leaf blowing and cleanup, etc. Lawn was flawless.
We tried to save money and went through two other services that claimed to do the same sort of "full service" at lower rates of $150 a month and then $200 a month and they were both lazy and terrible in comparison. Lawn and flower beds look like shit with a lot of weeds and they barely tend our trees, shrubs, flowers and bushes. We are switching back soon. Now that I have seen the other side I can definitely say that while $260 is steep they were definitely worth it.
I used to maintain everything in our first house until the last few years before we moved. The best service I ever used for about .5 acres was $260 a month. They came weekly and did everything including fertilizer, lawn pest control, weed control, pruning, edging, leaf blowing and cleanup, etc. Lawn was flawless.
We tried to save money and went through two other services that claimed to do the same sort of "full service" at lower rates of $150 a month and then $200 a month and they were both lazy and terrible in comparison. Lawn and flower beds look like shit with a lot of weeds and they barely tend our trees, shrubs, flowers and bushes. We are switching back soon. Now that I have seen the other side I can definitely say that while $260 is steep they were definitely worth it.
General rule of thumb is that an employee's wage/salary is only slightly more than half the total cost to employ them, once you add in taxes, insurance, etc.. Then the employer also needs liability and workers comp. insurance. Then they have overhead costs for things like trucks, equipment, storage, etc..
Generally not too bad a rate if it was 4 dudes doing a full day of work plus disposal of bulk concrete.
It's also a problem of demand on the guys and understaffing. It's seasonal work so it tends to attract a lot of temporary help that only sticks around for a couple weeks because the work is physically demanding and tough. Jobs will be lined up for weeks in advance, company will have two (or three, or four+) crews ready to go and then one work truck will have three of its guys quit in a week because they're sick of busting their ass. So now you have increased demand on the other crew(s) to work through stuff they shouldn't so that you don't lose the other contract and money, plus have your company get dragged for not being able to fulfill its promises.
And for the guys on the ground actually doing the work, they usually aren't the decision makers, especially if it's a larger company. They can't just call the office and say "nah it's too hot, we aren't working today". Not to mention that the majority of individual homeowners (rather than apartment complexes/businesses) hiring landscapers to do the jobs arent the sort who are happy having a 3 day job that's costing them $12k turn into a week and a half because its too hot or its raining or whatever else, and think the landscaping company is just trying to scam them out of more money.
I was glad our company was mostly property maintenance (cutting grass, picking up garbage, weeding garden beds, trimming hedges, etc) for big condo corporations or apartment buildings for Monday-Friday, and we only did small scale construction/landscaping jobs on weekends that could be turned around in like one and a half day. The owner was always at the site and doing the work himself too and could field the questions and complaints from the homeowners. Nowadays he owns a fleet of vehicles and runs like 5 separate crews instead of just his own, so I'm sure there's issues with the scaling up stuff too.
I just recently had a small tree removed from the side of my house, and it cost me $400. Apparently, that's a decent price.
Next spring we're getting our backyard and side of our house done, and I'm fully expecting that to cost a couple thousand. The previous homeowners didn't give a shit about the yard, but at least I don't have an HOA to hound me about it.
Next spring we're getting our backyard and side of our house done, and I'm fully expecting that to cost a couple thousand. The previous homeowners didn't give a shit about the yard, but at least I don't have an HOA to hound me about it.
My gardener is pretty good to be fair. Though he's lethal with a strimmer (has chopped up a bunch of plant pots, so many that we now have a border so he can't get to them!).
If you see a crew working in a neighborhood or for an HoA stop by and talk to them, offer cash and they'll take care of a lot. Probably not putting in landscape but for trimming trees, fixing sprinklers, etc they'll do it and probably while on the clock anyway for the city
I do know that because so many people are home, they are doing work on their yards/landscaping. There are some companies around me that are so busy that they want a $75 deposit just to come do a quote. River Rocks are going through the roof in price due to demand. That being said, we just signed a contract for a job to put some rocks in to help drainage... $2k. And that was about $500 cheaper than the other 4 companies that quoted me. It IS insane.
I just paid about 2500 to had sod installed in my front yard. Between them removing the previous "grass" and prepping the land for the sod, it seemed like hard worth. I felt it was worth it.
...I definitely ruined some peoples gardens and plants when I was trimming hedges/weeding garden beds/cutting grass/using a string-trimmer("weed-whacker").
I was like "oh yeah, that's a weed"; nope, it was some imported moss that was deliberately added to do ground cover. "That thing looks like it needs to be cut"; nope, it was like two weeks away from flowering at which point I would have realized it wasnt supposed to be trimmed. The good news is that plants grow back; the bad news is the boss would just be like "oh yeah, we'll replace those" and then eat the cost because of dumb little Pyke Presco fucking up the job...