advise on aeration

[lawnboy82]

hey all. got one more for you all.
yesterday i did a cleanup on one of my small properties and saw a guy about my age doing a not cleanup but almost like a lawn renovation on a fairly healthy lawn, the kid went and dethatched and aerated the lawn. i went back after him to tell the woman that she had been ripped off. i did this because it was my friend's account. i went and looked and they did a 10M sq ft lawn with a gandy aerator pulled by a quad. the lawn was torn apart. you could see the tire tracks from the machine and the lawn had been raped by both that and the thatching machine. they did not go both ways with the aerator from what it looked like. now that bothered me. however here is my dilema-
i have to aerate about 6 acres of turf. nice open areas that are fine for such a large rig. the biggest aerator i can rent though is about 28-30 inches wide. now to do 6 acres with criss crossing would take 1 guy with the machine about 3 days i would say. probably more. i am gonna charge T&M. however if i could get this kid to go there and do it with his machine i would be able to free up my guy and get the job done real fast.
more trouble- these people want all employees to be covered by w/c - i dont think this kid has w/c.
even more trouble- i looked at the cores that the machine made and they were pretty messy.
what do i do? i wanna get this over and done with but i want it to look nice.

[paul]

Go to your local tractor dealer and see if they have a tracor and areator you can rent, nice one day job.

[John DiMartino]

I can aerate my 7 acre lawn in under 2 hrs with my 6 ft Ryan 3 point areator,if you can rent one of these beasts-do it,you need a 4000 lb minimum,30hp to pull it.My 4500 lb 32 hp Ford pulls it great,I am covered with cores when i m done,but it works great.Mine woighe about 1000 lbs too,so it really gets down without adding weight.Id get at least 300 for that size job,if it were close to me,and be on and off the trailer in under 2 hrs.

[Edited by John DiMartino on 04-15-2001 at 10:36 PM]

[lawnboy82]

my problem is that i dont have a large tractor to do this with. or even a small tractor. and how much do you even charge for something of that size. going over 6 acres 2 times meaning criss cross. it is 2 sites though. each is 3 acres.

[John DiMartino]

It sounds like it's to big a job for you,you dont have the equipment,so sub it out-or just forget it-tell them thank you,but at this time you are unable to properly do a job that size-and leave it at that.It would take you days to do with a walk behind-you would be tired in 3 hrs-I wouldnt do it,but you are obvoiusly younger than me,and have more desire to do this type of work,good luck.

[Eric ELM]

As Paul said above, rent one to do the job.

Another option is get a tow behind 42" or 60" and pull it with your ZTR if you have one. I have a Lesco/Classen 42" tow behind and I could do each 3 acre lawn twice in 4 hours if it is fairly open. You would have a total of 8 hours in the 2 lawns and I would charge at least $1080 for the 2 if it was flat and open.

There has been posts in here saying they charge $12 a thousand sf. so that would be $3,136 at that rate to do it once and another $3,136 for the second time over it.

[KirbysLawn]

First, it sounds like as John pointed out, this job is too big for what you are equiped to handle. Why would you consider hiring someone who you state done such a bad job? If he did a crappy job and as you said "tire tracks from the machine and the lawn had been raped by both that and the thatching machine", why consider him for a job with your name on the line?

A few questions:

Are you planning on applying seed & fert or just aerating?

What did you bid?

Are you prepaired to spend $$ to get this job?

Please advise.

Ray