Is this price too high?

[dgreen67]

Hi

I have been enjoying the advice on this forum for quite some time. This is my first post, and it is a pricing question.

Here is the situation:

1. I am cleaning out four flower beds that are full of old juniper/weeds
2. re-mulching all four beds (2-3" thick)
3. planting a total of 55 liriope plants and 12 nandina bushes

The bed sizes are:
13' x 20'
15' x 22'
9' x 17'
8' x 18'

Total of about 887 sq. ft.
I estimated about 8 yards of mulch, and plant/bush material = $780.00

I figured, based on several posts in this forum, a price of about $1900.00 for time and material.

Is this too high of an estimate in your opinion? I would really like to get more work from this, but I also don't want to underprice either.

Thanks for any advice.

Dan

[toac]

how long is this going to take you? is it just you or do you have help?

[dgreen67]

I am doing this one alone. I am going to have the mulch delivered onsite though.

thanks

[dgreen67]

Sorry, didn't answer your first question, I am not totally sure of time, I tried pulling some of the juniper and it came out easy. But not sure of total time.

[toac]

18 2/3 hours at $60/hour - how much do you want to make per hour?

[dgreen67]

Since I haven't done much of this type of work, I was going by some posts that said to charge about 2.5 times the price of the mulch for labor, and something similar to that for planting.

Does this help? thanks for your replies toac

[toac]

where i'm at you can usually get about $60-$65 per yard of mulch installed. it ends up being about $40-$45 per hour in labor.

does 1 yard of mulch installed per hour sound right to everyone else?

[fiveoboy01]

Well as far as your mulch figure goes, at 3" you'd need 8.2 yards.

If it was 2" of topdress, then you'd only need 5.5 yards. Pretty significant difference.

I try to get 70/yard installed. If it's a little bit larger job of 10 or more yards I'll drop it to 65/yard but no lower than that.

[dgreen67]

The price per yard is labor only, is that correct?

thanks

[fiveoboy01]

No, I quote 70 bucks per yard, that's labor and materials. I'm thinking that I might be upping it to 75 or 80/yard in the near future. Keep in mind this is just the mulch installation only, if they desire a new edge, weeding before the mulch, or something then there are additional charges.

[Pioneer01]

Only $60-70 per yard installed??? I got hit with a nice price increase on mulch this year ($38.50 for light cedar) and ive been chargin $80 installed since spring. What are you uys back east payin for mulch?

[fiveoboy01]

I pay quite a bit less than 38.50/yard for every variety of mulch that my supplier carries.