How much would you pay for weed killing?

1cat2fish

I am a gardener, next year I am thinking of adding a new service spraying block paving and gravel drives with weedkiller to control weeds. Not sure what I should be charging for this service, what do you think? I've held my licence for over 15 years and just spray my customers paths and drives as part of the service. It's never crossed my mind to do it as a standalone job. I wondered if there would be much call for this sort of thing, would like to know what people think.

geordie_joe

1cat2fish wrote: »

I wondered if there would be much call for this sort of thing, would like to know what people think.

I work in a DIY store that has a garden section and Pathclear etc. flies off the shelves.

Not sure if anyone would pay you to do it, if they did it would have to be cheaper than they can do it for themselves.

Would it be worth the travel costs just to visit someone to spray their drive?

I think the only thing you can do is set your price and advertise/ask around and see what happens.

Stonker

I think we paid £180 for 8 acres. That would have taken a lot of weedol and I guess you can't buy stuff off the shelves that killd ragwort

paddyrg

People who have weeds in their drives may have other problems - like discoloured/algae/moss on brickwork for instance - how about offering a range of related services and get a pressure washer in on the job too?

1cat2fish

Thank you for your replies everyone. Very helpful, something for me to work on over the winter.

SailorSam

Weedkiller can be awful expensive, after reading about it on the Internet i bought some cheap salt from Tesco. 1kg cost 25p and i mixed it in the watering can, got 3 lots out of the one bag, and have got rid of most of the weeds but do regular doses whenever they come back.

SpendyMcSpenderton

I have a nightmare of a garden and would happily pay about £50/£60 for someone to come around and do it....

I must note at 28 years old, this is my first ever garden and it was a very advanced mature one when we bought it from the previous owners. I don't know what anything is and am pretty sure the flowers I find are pretty are probably weeds lol

googler

The going rate for general gardening services round my way is £15 per hour. I wouldn't pay any more than that for a bit of weedkilling to be done in the garden as part of a larger project.

I wouldn't pay anyone to come and weedkill either the borders or the drive/pathway specifically. At all.

why_not_2

We had someone bang on the door wanting to pressure wash and then weed treat our block paved drive. Its long enough to park 3 cars on, just. He wanted £200, and got quite huffy when told no. He reckoned this was a good price. The drive isn't in bad shape, just the usual moss in some place between the bricks and the occasional small week that we pull out by hand. He then upped his offer to include sand swept in.
Still got told to go away, as its something we can do ourselves, but I noticed a couple of neighbors did take him up on it.
We are based on the south coast, hope that helps.

1cat2fish

I use professional weedkiller (I am licensed for spraying) and it's a lot cheaper than what you buy in your local Diy store.
The reason why I asked the question is as I'm driving from one job to another I see an awful lot of weedy block paving and gravel drives. It does seem such a shame when people have gone to the trouble of having a driveway laid they can't or won't kill the weeds and end up with a really scruffy approach to their property.

Rainbow2911

I've seen advertisments for drive maintenance companies/people, so it must work in some places! Seems like a good idea to me - I would think there would be a market for regular cleaning and weedspraying.