Backyard Landscaping Ideas

you know I tell you time and time again pre-qualify your customers don't go out chasing uh false leads or wasting your time without knowing how much a customer is willing to spend well today I pre-qualified a customer for a project that $25,000 over the phone side unseen so I knew it was worth my time to go out to his site but when I get there he actually UPS the amount of money he's willing to spend on this project to $30,000 before I've given him his estimate check out my response to this today I'm meeting with Jeff we just met for the first time today and what we're looking at is Jeff has a jungle look at his that character and he's got three little kids and what we're going to do is we're going to transform this into something that's usable what's going to be very difficult to tell and difficult to see is the elevation that Jeff is currently standing on we're going to extend that out and he's got what I'm going to anticipate is about an 8ot drop we're going to look his property line stops this is his tree here this tree right here is the demarcation line for his property boundary and what we're going to do is he originally called me up and he gave me a $25,000 budget I got here you upped it by $5,000 before I even know my mouth when you talk to a contractor you shouldn't do that J and I came in with a The Proposal that was about 19,000 okay what I the solution we've got with this job is we are going to bring in clay so we're coming into the jungle we're going to I'm going to spin around we're going to come in this way we're going to start taking down all the brush and we're going to literally bury it and the reason we're not going to worry about clearing it out we're going to cut it or haul it worry about any of the small stuff is because we're going to import 456 tons of CL based soil and yes you're going to have a layer and yes that's going to decompose but like I explained to Jeff when you have 456 tons this is a backyard we're not putting a shed we're not putting a pool we're not putting a structure we're not putting anything on it we're just going to be growing grass and we're trying to do this for the least amount of money as possible we can probably live with a couple inches of settlement in a couple years are we good with that y perfect and so the proposal is going to be based on importing 456 tons of material I can shoot him this number because I've already got a job in contract doing the almost the exact same thing not too far away from here so we're replicating something that we've already done we're almost bringing in the same amount of material it's something that we know works and we know it works well and saves Jeff $111,000 roughly what we got to do so I want to cover one of the things what we got to do is when we create this flat area this is an important point now I want you to watch this we're going to actually create a one to one slope so it's going to be flat and it's going to be a one to one slope like that down to the toe and it's that one toone slope that we talked about solving any erosion problems my my suggestion to him is to drive when you drive down the highway you look at the underpasses of bridges and you have a vertical the structure holding up the bridge and then you have the bank that bank usually has what they call Quick grass Turf establishment blanket on it it's something Jeff can do on his own or I can do it for him and I can tell them where to get it from I don't care who does it but what we're going to do is on that slope we're going to roll this quick grass turface blanket out we're going to staple it into the slope and then Jeff is going to plant it with wild flowers whatever the boss says his boss is probably the same as my boss almost so um in that case now he called me out for the retaining wall with three small children I'm trying to get them to avoid a retaining wall because they I can imagine the kids running I can imagine them playing and I can imagine them soaring off from an 8ot drop a vertical drop that is not quite as nice as rolling down a one to one slope or an 8ot Hill where they're not going to get nearly as likely injured or have any problems so I think we've come up with a solution that saves him money saves them saves his kids any issues now we got to explore the site how are we going to get in here initial thoughts are here but we're going to walk down to the bottom and we're going to look at an access road that I guess exists down through the jungle this is the access point where Jeff is at right now he's looking up at his property this makes my job a lot easier Jeff I figured I was going to be making a road Through the Jungle in there um your neighbor planted these wild flowers here is that going to be an issue if we have to come in through no no not at all okay so we would create one access point in and then we just start going to town and working we could load we could drop we'd have to drop dirt down here um and cut off this axis road but with the people that live right here what we would do is we'd coordinate with them so we'd make sure that at no point would this guy be unable to get his truck out or in you know overnight maybe during the work day there may be times where 15 minutes or half hour we knock on the door hey you know what we're going to drop another load we're going to do whatever work with them to make sure that they're more than comfortable with what's going on here the only question that I could see them asking you is about the drainage okay because now what we're going to be doing is we're going to be extending your your heill out and then bringing it down and inevitably oh how's that going to affect my property for drainage well the honest gu truth is not going to affect it at all because all property supposed to drain towards the boundary lines okay we're really not changing anything but the pitch so we're actually creating less runoff initially because it has it slows it down because what you have right now is one angle that goes down and that just shoots the water towards these guys house what we're going to do is we're going to level your yard off which slows the water flow down which means it can perk through the ground and then we'll have a steeper slope but that is less surface area Okay so technically really isn't going to change but technically it should be less water going toward their property interesting way of looking at it that's it I think we're good this is a a nice easy these are the types of jobs I love these are fun jobs I love coming in with solutions that are a little bit outside the box saves you money and makes our job easier [Music]