How to bid a Paver Patio

okay in another video you'd seen how I taught you how to install a paver project like this in this one we're going to actually do some whiteboard lessons I'm going to teach you how to bid and estimate doing a project like this now this one isn't really a very normal paver patio in the video on how to install them if you'll see we came into this site we had eight maybe ten inches of standing water that we had to pump out then we had to do a minor soil correction we're going to do a little trick they trick I'm going to show you right now we're putting road base fabric and then we deepen the base material itself so what you see here is class five about 10 inches thing then we had to bridge it bringing in rock putting fabric down I'm going to teach you how to estimate all of that today so go back to the other video if you want to learn how to install it this one is going to teach you how to price it out all right let's get into the estimating on this job site this is really what you here for I'm actually going to walk you through the actual invoice that I'm going to be submitting to this customer and there's a few things I want to point out the numbers that I'm going to give you for paver patio estimating how much to charge they're only applicable to Minneapolis Minnesota this part of the country our prices are so jacked up in comparison to other parts of the country what I want you to do is I want you to understand where the prices come from how you can manipulate them for your area because what it all boils down to is about being competitive and a good example is in this neck of the woods right now labor is so scarce that just to get an okay person I got to pay twenty dollars an hour and I got a promise to bake them cookies every day so it's really not maybe not the same as what you're experiencing where you're at now for pavers themselves I want to break this down this was a residential site not a commercial site the pricing I'm going to give you will that work for a commercial site if you bid the way I'm going to tell you how to bid on a commercial site you will probably never get the job commercial sites have a very specific way of bidding and I'll cover that in a future video but for today it's residential only you've seen the project it wasn't a very big project came out to be three hundred and forty four point five square feet or something like that now the first thing I'm going to tell you is market price prevails okay take that into your head in the Twin Cities metropolitan area the average price is going for eighteen dollars to twenty three dollars per square foot that's just where the market price is okay if you charge under that you're just giving your work away for free if you charge over twenty three dollars a square foot you're not going to be getting as much work because your competition is going to be coming somewhere between 18 and 23 the important point is for you to find out what the market price is in your area because that's going to really be the starting point to dictate where all of your estimates you know they must fall get that range okay now I want to veer a little bit away from that because I'm because I'm thinking of it at the moment I want to teach you how to measure these sites because measuring the site is something that almost every contractor screws up on they go out and they take a tape measure before the job and they measure how big the area is and then they take a tape measure after the job and measure how big the area is I'm going to show you why you don't want to do that make sure I'm not using a sharpie this is important okay on a semi-circular job like we had this job was basically a semicircle like this okay what I do is I break all of my jobs down into squares so when I measure bring the job I measure squares because I'm not bright enough to figure out the radius of a semicircle at a 33 degree egg open them out in the field but I am bright enough to go hey one side x another side will give me how many square feet is in that area okay so if I measure a square at five by three I know this Square has 15 square feet in it and then if I just say hey you know what I got some oversizing I'll cut that down to maybe nine or seven I just kind of guesstimate at that point because for the initial measurement I don't care how I don't have to be accurate okay I got to get close I don't have to be accurate so I go through and I measure squares in the entire project but this will kill you with the end of the job you don't want to measure squares at the end so to get you a deeper understanding when I'm first meeting the customer and I got to figure out how many square feet this guy has in his job what I do is I break his job down into squares in this case we got one two three four squares each square has well 15 15 and we'll say nine and nine this one's nine this one's nine so 35 one thirty nine forty eight square feet would be this project this is just an example okay just an example at the end of the job if I go out now the customer is paying $20 a square foot they're going to want to know exactly how many square feet are on this jobsite we're going to want to know to the degree because it's costing them $20 per square foot so you have an obligation to get this number right at the end of the job I hope I'm not getting too too confusing for you if I am email me and I'll clarify it at the beginning of the job I get a close number so I can give them an estimate at the end of the job what I do instead of remeasuring because this is where you guys will get screwed let's say this is the end of the job and I got my same semi-circle and i measure what happens is I'm not measuring this area right here and rightfully so because there's no patio there but to create these semicircular cuts I have to cut all these pavers I have to cut all these blocks and I throw them away and they're no longer on the site you can no longer measure them I still had to purchase them as a contractor I still had to deliver them to the site I still had to cut them and then I had to go and physically throw the remaining portion away and they're not there to be measured okay so how do you overcome that you get us you get the supplier whoever your supplier is to keep track and I know you're you know what no the supplier is going to charge you for the materials you have a bill to pay when you purchase those pavers you have a bill to pay what you ask the supplier to do is to break that bill down into how many square feet you purchased and then how much it cost you per square foot that is going to be the most accurate because when you do your returns you're going to return the whole pavers so you'll have maybe five or six leftover imagine on a job site you're going to return those and give those back to the supplier and he's going to subtract that out of your invoice you're not going to return the cuts okay those are going to be thrown away but to the supplier you still bought those cuts so that's still on your invoice from the supplier so you can't do a site measurement at the end of the job because it doesn't take into consideration each and every brick that you had to cut and throw away but the spreadsheet from the supplier will make sure you're not shorting yourself on that end of it now let's get a little bit more into the pricing itself and how you break each component down now we started out by saying market price prevails and that is the Ruth okay so you're going to get the average price in your area and you know that that's going to dominate whatever your costs are but that's just for the patio itself so let's just assume and I know whenever you assume it makes an ass out of you and me so but I've you know been called much worse my whole life so we're assuming that your pricing will fall within the market range whatever that may be I'm going to use my market range which is 18 to 23 dollars a square foot on average on this exact job I charged him 19 dollars and 70 cents per square foot the reason I charged him 19 dollars and 70 cents per square foot is first because it falls about dead even in my market range a little bit on the lower end and we did more work okay not very scientific there right but I when I'm looking at 18 it wasn't a very big job so if it was like a five hundred to a thousand square feet I would charge him less and if it was a smaller job I would charge him a little bit more so I look at the size of the job itself and go okay about the size of this job big jobs that can charge less I want this job I got a bigger field to put in you know things like that smaller jobs also the other thing that I take into consideration is how many cuts am I going to make am i creating a semicircle am i adding a lot of pattern into the middle how much cutting am I going to have to do so when I look at the design and the layout of them of the site itself I always add a little bit more or a little bit less if I'm creating just one big box and I'm using of just a brick stone pattern a basket weave pattern or whatever that will easily fit in there and there's very little cutting well I don't have to charge as much but on this this job that you've seen earlier that had that semicircular edge which meant I had to cut that whole thing then I had to cut every other one so I get to charge a little bit more so if the customer asks me where my price comes into play I have actual validation I have an actual reason which will justify how much I can charge the customer okay you got to go into these things knowing ahead of time where your endgame is going to be on that job we installed ten inches of base material this is where we're going to get scientific this is where we're going to break a formula down for you because there's no guesswork to that all right six inches is where the industry standard is right some people may say four I always say it's at least six you're adding more than that then you're taking money out of your back pocket because you can charge for extra base material above and beyond six inches when it's needed and this job site it was needed we installed ten inches of base what we do is I have a formula because I get this much of this call all the time I get it the phone call hey can you come out and just prep the base for me I want to lay my own pavers that's freaking annoying I'm sure you guys as contractors have gotten that call I just took the annoyance out of it and I created a formula that works that puts money in my pocket and I'm going to share that with you the formula is on a job where I'm just going on prepping the base doing nothing else I'm not stalling any brick stone paver patios not doing anything else the formula is one dollar per square foot per inch okay so if I have four inches of base material that I'm going to go out and install for a customer I'm doing nothing else so I got to dig down his grade then I got to put four inches of base material in there it's going to be one dollar and it's let's say the area is a hundred square feet so it'll be one dollar per inch per square foot so it will be a hundred times four would be $400 to prep that area I'm going to double check that bath and get back to you on that one now I'm this big yep I checked the math and it's correct so I'm going to actually bring that formula over to the actual job site and compare and contrast a little bit okay now if I was going to prep this job site this paint this patio that I installed was 344 square feet if I got the phone call from him and I wasn't doing anything else but just putting in four inches of class five now you know we normally put in six but in this case I want to stick with four inches we're not getting confusing I was just putting four inches of class five in for him and nothing else not installing a patio or nothing I would be charging three hundred and forty four times four because I'm putting four inches in okay so that would be one thousand three hundred seventy six dollars that's what I would charge them let's say I was going to put six inches of base material in so then it would be the size of the patio 344 square feet times six and that gives me two thousand sixty four dollars and a lot of you're going oh my god you can't get those prices yes I do yes I but I'm in Minneapolis Minnesota you know the prices are jacked up around here now on this exact jobsite you saw the filter fabric and you saw the ten inches of base 6 inches came with the patio four inches were extra okay so now on my invoice to the customer I have an actual line item for doing that work and that was six hundred eighty eight dollars and this is how I came up with it the size of the patio three hundred and forty four times four which gives me my formula one thousand three hundred seventy six dollars but I was here working I'm installing a patio I'm already doing other work so I'm going to cut that price down to half okay that's going to cover my expense that's going to cover my material that's going to cover my labor that's going to give the customer a little bit of a price break I'm not here to gouge them just because I'm on site doesn't mean I'm going to gouge my customer for extra work I'm not going to give it away that is still a decent price to my company but still fair price to the customer that's six hundred and eighty eight dollars okay so on this exact job the paver patio itself I charged him nineteen dollars and seventy cents per square foot the reason I chose that numbers because it wasn't a very big patio so that amped it up to the higher end between the eighteen and twenty three and there was an entire side that had to be cut but I also weighed that against the fact that we demoed his swimming pool we were installing black dirt we're putting edging in we're completely transforming this guy's backyard and the overall job size was over fourteen thousand dollars roughly for everything that we were doing out there and so I wasn't going to you know price out that patty at the very top of it so in this video you've got to balance what you're going to be installing with the market price that you can get okay versus how many cuts you're gonna make how much stuff you're going to have to throw away make sure at the end of the job that you're using a spreadsheet from your supplier for your final tally what you're going to charge the customer all of my customers know this ahead of time I actually disclosed that a spreadsheet will be will be brought in right from the supplier and it will show every block this is the way I actually phrase it I will give you a spreadsheet that shows every block the day it was delivered the time it was delivered who signed off on the delivery that is going to be your final invoice on this job we are going to go by that we are not going to take a tape measure and measure out how many square feet are actually installed we're going to use what the supplier is saying was brought out to your job site because that's what I the contractor have to pay for your materials now on that spreadsheet I don't let I let the customer see the spreadsheet but I don't let the customer see the invoice amount that's my business what I actually paid for the block is my business okay so I actually black out or erase out the actual invoice numbers but I focus on the delivery the material quantities and things like that and I have that pre-arranged with the supplier so that I can get a very accurate and fast spreadsheet so as soon as the job is done I make a phone call say hey I'm invoicing this job I need the spreadsheet they'll have it to me within 24 hours and I can then invoice my customer right away so that's how we're doing it for this job I hope this has helped you guys what else do you guys want to see is there anything else I can break down for you if you have any questions or comments please put them down below I read every single thing you guys write whether you're emailing me commenting in the videos down below sometimes it takes me a while to get back to you I apologize but I read everything and sometimes it's 10 o'clock at night after I'm done working or something but I will promise read what you write so put a comment in down below I'm here to help you guys why you guys to make the absolute most money you possibly can stop watching videos go out make live and go get them love you guys have a good one

Channel: Stanley "Dirt Monkey" Genadek

Views: 196,082

Rating: 4.859334 out of 5

Keywords: how to charge for a paver patio, paver patio cost per square foot, how much to charge for paver driveway, paver driveway cost, how to bid a paver patio, how to estimate a paver patio, how to measure for patio pavers, paver patio cost estimate, how to estimate the cost of a paver patio, how to estimate the cost of a paver driveway, How-to (Website Category), landscape business consulting, how to bid a paver driveway, Patio (Industry), landscaping ideas

Id: SZqx3tC2S4o

Length: 18min 54sec (1134 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2015