£600 to level a garden and remove waste

corum_uk67

Bob - thanks, it wasn't a lot of work really (with a decent rake), but it has made quite a difference. I do actually have a mattock (so far unused) that I bought last year from, would you believe, screwfix, for the purpose of digging up some shrubs, but in the end the guy next door with the digger dug them up for free as a favour after i'd agreed to them removing my fence at the rear to get their heavy machinery in for the neighbours extension. It was this 'freeby' of digging up a few shrub roots that created the mess in the original photo's and hence the need for further quotes to sort things out properly. With the difficulty in actually getting someone to do the work this time of year though I might well just start chipping away at it myself, although I reckon there's probably a good tonne or two of rocks, gravel, concrete blocks and soil to get rid of so a skip may be called for.

Doozergirl - no need to despair, you've simply miss-read the post.
The two quotes for 'option A' are from different companies.
The two quotes for 'option B' are from different companies.
The first quote for 'option a' and 'option b' are from the same company, who are not VAT registered.

Diana2014

Half the fun of taking over a garden is in getting to know it properly, so I did all this myself in 1995. Mine needed complete hand excavation to eradicate chronic bindweed that was growing all over it. It took me about two months, working 2-3 hours on most dry afternoons, to excavate a space about 45 feet by 22 feet, sometimes a couple of feet deep.

Hand excavating lets one sort rubble from bricks, old household items and other rubbish, which gave me useful materials for re-landscaping the space the way that I wanted it and minimised what had to be thrown out - most of which went in the general household rubbish collection, because it accumulated only slowly. When a brick wall had to be rebuilt, the builders hired a half-skip and took away scores of sacks of rubble that I'd dug out - but I later found that I could have used that for substrate when building paths, laying flagstones, creating a French drain alongside the house wall etc.

Nowadays there are council garden waste collections which can take plant waste (up to 2 inches in diameter), too. I just composted all the small stuff - except the bindweed, of course.

If I had to get this sort of job done now, I'd use a garden labourer at perhaps £12 an hour (in inner London), rather than doing it myself, and expect the job to be done much faster, if less carefully. Gardeners sort and reuse materials as they go along; labourers just fill rubble sacks as fast as possible and help to haul them out to the front of the house! Having someone use a digger is pointless unless there are lots of tree stumps etc to pull out.

Risteard

corum_uk67 wrote: »

Doozergirl - no need to despair, you've simply miss-read the post.
The two quotes for 'option A' are from different companies.
The two quotes for 'option B' are from different companies.
The first quote for 'option a' and 'option b' are from the same company, who are not VAT registered.

To be fair I thought that was pretty obvious. I'm not entirely sure how it was misinterpreted.

markin

If you are fit i don't see anything that coulnt be done with a spade and rake, and 1 or 2 trips to the dump.


I also would expect a ground works company to own the digger rather than rent, so unless they live 3hrs away the cost to bring it to site on a trailer should be a little extra petrol.

corum_uk67

Well i posted the pics of the garden on gumtree with the headline 'free rocks and gravel' and managed to get rid of a few rocks that way!

Had a further quote to patch up the garden (referred to as 'option A' in previous posts) from a local company who seem to dabble in a bit of everything. They quoted me £596 all in which was, I thought, spot on, until they sent me the invoice and wanted £400 of it a month before they were due to start the work. I told them I could only offer to pay them on completion or at the end of each day but they wouldn't accept so I guess i'm back to square one!

silverwhistle

A month?! Yea, I keep getting offers to 'sort out your silver birch' when it doesn't need sorting and two doors down is a forestry guy! My instinct warning bells were ringing as they always do when I'm cold approached, and you're probably feeling the same about being asked for money in advance like that.

corum_uk67

Indeed. I think asking for a deposit of £100 or so at the start of the job to cover materials costs (which in this case is minimal) would have been fine but to demand a large % to be paid upfront is not good business sense for the contractor and to pay it would not be good common sense for the customer.