Plantscape Solutions

[KrayzKajun]

Bout time you update. Lol. Gate looks good.
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[LawnMan19]

I just noticed your Install work and WOW! it looks great.

[Paragon Ridge]

Did you have to cover the cost of replacing that large tree or did the client pay you again to come back?

[PlantscapeSolutions]

Originally Posted by Paragon Ridge

Did you have to cover the cost of replacing that large tree or did the client pay you again to come back?

At first I was not going to warranty the tree because the customer did not follow my watering instruction. But on this transaction there were a considerable amount of greenbacks involved that were a little hush hush if you know what I mean.

I ate the cost of the tree but the customer later had us to a few more grand in work, we still do the maintenance, and he even got us the job of doing some sporadic maintenance on four baseball fields.

I normally plant tree's this size about 4-6" higher for better drainage and if I had done this the fist time I may had gotten away with the customer over watering. You never want to plant flush because the porous soil used by the grower has a lot of air space that can easily be displaced by water. The surrounding native soil has very, very, little air space and drains slowly. Because of this you can have standing water around your tree that drains away very slowly and causes a water pocket effect.

[ed2hess]

Originally Posted by PlantscapeSolutions

I was going to redo this gate frame since it was poorly built but both companies that were going to do the work have required too much baby sitting. With our water restrictions still in place for this summer it's not a good time to spend money if you don't have too. This gate has held up for two years but I did not trust the longevity at all.

I wanted to buy some adjustable wheels to try to give the gate some support and take a lot of the load off the frame. I thought if I could get some support wheels the gate may last many more years. I could not find any heavy duty height adjustable wheels for gates at all so I modified a set of boat jacks.

A little drilling and grinding was required but they did the trick just fine. A few turns of the jacks and all the sag is gone. A lot of stress has been taken off the POS frame and hopefully it will last many more years.

I did the little pad for the drop rods last year and that little sucker has 480 lbs of concrete in it. I hope I never have to demo that pad because it's also full of rebar.

You have some good work and this gate is of a lot of interest to us. We got the same situation and our friendly fence company wanted $500 and that was discounted. Would you mind putting more pictures up of the gate? I didn't understan how the concrete slab comes into play on the gate?

[PlantscapeSolutions]

Originally Posted by ed2hess

You have some good work and this gate is of a lot of interest to us. We got the same situation and our friendly fence company wanted $500 and that was discounted. Would you mind putting more pictures up of the gate? I didn't understan how the concrete slab comes into play on the gate?

The little slab has galvanized pipe nipples in it that my two drop rods slide down into to secure the two 10' gate doors firmly. When the guy built the gate it was poorly secured and would blow back and forth a little in the middle. Only one side of the gate originally had a drop rod and the other half of the gate was only held shut by the type of hardware you would find on a small walk through gate.

I went to Academy and purchased two of the 800 lb boat trailer tongue jacks for $35 each. I did not use any of the hardware that would allow the jack to swivel up like they would on a trailer. There was a slight raised nipple in the center of the mounting plate I had to grind down so it would mount up flush.

The square mounting plate you see attached to the jack is how the it came. I didn't do any fabrication work to the jack at all. I removed the U-bolts that were attached to the jack and used the vacant holes for the top mounting holes you see on the square plate. I drilled two more holes at the bottom of the plate for a second set of mounting bolts.

Every application is going to be different but I only had to use one 2x6x8 cut into sections to create a solid mounting location on my gate. I can snap a few more shots if you would like. My gate isn't going to win any beauty contests but it should last a whole lot longer.

If you have a gate that gets used a lot I would recommend getting the heavier duty jacks because they are more rigid and have even better tires.

[FoghornLeghorn]

Nice engineering on that gate, David. Occasionally I can think outside the box like that, but not as much as I'd like
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[PlantscapeSolutions]

Here is a sample of an AutoCAD drawing I used to win a pool job this past summer. I do all my designs with AutoCAD and it tends to make a lot of other companies designs look like it was done by a third grader. I won the job on knowledge not from being the cheapest bid. If I had to win all my bids from being the cheapest bid like commercial work I think I'd look for another line of work.

Hopefully this drought will end soon and people will once again start investing in landscaping. I miss those years like 05', 06, 07, and even 08' when I had a waiting list with ten projects. Those were the days.

The house on this design is on page 3.

[idealscape]

Well, I was going to discuss the mulch, but after posting realized that this thread is 6 months old and is now on another topic. haha...still getting use to this lawnsite stuff. oh well.

[PlantscapeSolutions]

I'll have picture tomorrow of my top dresser. For the Austin guys it's at Travis Tractor. I saw it today but didn't have time to get my trailer to pick it up.