How to Bid, Charge, Estimate and Install Mulch

mulch today we're going to talk about fast economical ways that you can install mulch I shot a video on how to weed a garden and how to price that out I'm back back at the exact same site and today what we're going to be doing is installing Mulch and I want to cover a couple of the different options now for me I'm going to personally be installing this mulch the F the easy way for me to install the mulch would be for me to oh before I get into that let me show you what I got to do I got to install mulch down in this in this bed here and all through the side of the the house and then get it uh into all of these areas and uh tidy it up okay you'll notice two things there is no fabric down now realistically there should be fabric down and I gave the customer an option once we weeded this bed we discovered there was no Fabric and I had already given them a price for the mulch the price to mulch this bed was $375 that I quoted them that is to install mulch along here and in the back and sides without fabric I gave them an option A lot of you guys are going to come into this I hear you you make the mistake of finding no Fabric and feeling like you have to install fabric because you didn't know if fabric was there because it was so weedy before you couldn't tell whether there's Fabric or not and you find there's no Fabric and now you're putting Fabric in but you hadn't quoted the fabric in into your original price that's not your fault that's that's the mistake is taking on the fact that unknown circumstances are automatically your fault stop that that's not your fault after I discovered there was no fabric I made a simple phone call and said you don't have Fabric in place I can put fabric down for you but it will cost extra it will cost x amount of dollars and this customer opted not to install fabric that's the first thing I want to point out to you is don't take on extra job responsibilities on unknown circumstances so back to the original point now the easy way for me to install Mulch on this project is to get bags of mulch or to get bales of mulch bales of mulch I love bales of mulch but they tend to have mold issues so we don't always use bales of mulch okay bags of mulch be fast easy throw two bags on a shoulder carry it up pop it open and I'm in and out to cover this job would cost me at least $100 in bagged Mulch and I want to show you what I've opted to do in this case I opted to drive my pickup truck down down to the dealer and have them stick a scoop of mulch in the back of my truck now this isn't as easy to work with but this cost me $23.75 so $23 in mulch the extra $77 is going in my pocket and the difference is instead of being able to carry the mulch and bags out to the site I got to shovel it into a wheelbarrow wheelbarrow it up right to where I got to go and dump it off I no brainer it's going to take me probably just as long to do this as a carry bags of mulch and then then dispose of all the bags and everything else so let's get started on this job one of the things I want to point out when you're bidding and estimating a project like this is you have to take into consideration shop to shop time it's not just time on the job site now I'm going to be timing this I literally have a stopwatch and I'm stopwatch this job to see exactly how long it's going to take me to move this much mulch out and into the site spread it and grade it but that does not that time does not take into consideration the time it takes me to go to the yard pick up the truck get a tarp cuz you got a tarp uh wood chips like this or double Shred at hardwood mulch which is what I'm using you need the tarpet to go down the road so it doesn't blow out and create issues to get all the tools to get everything and then to return all that back you must take all of your time into consideration because your time is valuable so make sure you uh understand exactly how long it takes it's not just the time on the site but it's the time to prep the job from start to finish I call that shop to shop time [Music] okay here's something that needs to be addressed real quick you're only going to move this material one time so in this case what I want to point out is that I'm judging the front and the side as equal requiring equal amounts of mulch and so what I basically have done is I've taken a mental note of about where half the load of the pickup truck is and I put half of the load in the front and now I'm putting the second half of that load on the side if I put too much in the front guess what I got to do load it up it back into a wheelbarrow and wheelbarrow it around to the side it's something you don't want to do that's a waste of time so any and every single job you're on make a mental note that you will only handle the material once a lot of guys make a mistake here and I don't want to see you do that it's inefficient and it's going to cut into your body turning to the stopwatch we are now 33 minutes in we have the pickup truck all the ulch is out of it except for one little pile which I'm saving for touch-up spots um and the also the five phone calls I've received while I'm trying to to spread this malch but what you'll see is I just have it stockpiled strategically around the garden this is important because I don't want to put one load down spread it put one load down spread it that is to me less efficient now you may find that a better way of doing it and it may for you work better to do it that way because then you know exactly how much material you need and you don't you're not handling the material twice you don't accidentally put too much in one spot and have to move it over over the course of three decades of doing stuff like this I've kind of got a good knack to know how much goes where and so I don't have to do that I can just quickly move it strategic stockpile it and then I can just take my hands and just spread it out and get it all set up in place and it's a simple as that you can see I've done that throughout this entire site and now I'm just going to start uh finishing it up really there's really nothing else to uh mulch the only thing that's missing from this scenario is the fabric which I prefer to put in place but not everybody does and not this particular customer so let's Let's Start Spreading this stuff okay so I've hands spread all the mulch I didn't have to move it around a second time pretty much worked its way out but it may be a little difficult to see cuz I only spread it with my hands at this point it's not perfectly level and so what I'm going to do to fix that is I bring a leaf rake yep not a hard rake just a leaf rake and sometimes when I'm doing this grading work I'm not even going to use the tines I'm going to flip the leaf rake upside down like this and then may be a little difficult for me to do onehanded but I'm just going to I'm just going to use it kind of like a drag and that just does a nice job if I turn it upside down I may grab some of these uh this is a double shreded hardwood I may grab some onto it but I'll use it either way when I got two hands I'll turn it upside down and use it you have seen probably seen my other video where I I lay out the formula for install in mulch in this one I didn't actually use that formula because it was such a small job it's easy to look at it and go I know about how much mulch I need I know how much it's going to cost me and I can quickly tell how long it's going to take I estimated a total time of between four and 5 hours from start to finish to wrap this job up and it actually took me under that so although you can do you can break it out on a price per square foot you can ALS also as we showed you in this video you can do your estimates based on the quantity of materials and the cost of those materials and then how long you think it's going to take you both are viable ways of doing it sometimes the price per square foot works out and sometimes it doesn't other times the um basing it out on a time and material basis is a fine secondary way of doing it either way look for what works best for you for each scenario when it's all said and done basically the best way for you is whatever lands you the job and puts money in your pocket so try it both ways look at your projects both ways I want to make sure that you have all the information all the knowledge so that you can go into these bids competitively but more importantly than that profitably that's a big thing I love you guys take care God bless and get your butts to work