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Hey guys Mike here. So on this video it's going to be a little different than my normal videos. We're going to talk a little bit about pricing jobs and how I price a project like this and why I price it like this. You know why my prices are what they are. So we got a pool patio here. It's about a thousand square feet and you know the customer calls me up. They want to know how much it's going to be for us to come down and install the concrete around their pool. So we basically just do concrete. We don't do the prep
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Now the people that install, this is an in-ground pool, it's a vinyl pool, but whether it's vinyl like this or gunite or whatever it is, usually the pool people will, you know, obviously put up the pool and then they'll also do a little backfilling around the pool
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But if you want more, if you want a bigger deck than say like four feet around the pool, generally someone else has to get involved, like an excavator, a landscape contractor or somebody that's going to come up and prep
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for the concrete or I guess some concrete guys do their own prep it's just that we've always been way
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too busy pouring concrete to get into the prep part of the business you know with the skid steers
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the excavators bulldozers dump trucks and all that that's a whole different thing than we want to do
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because we're pouring concrete like this every day so for you guys that do both that's perfectly
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fine. The underground, like the sub-base prep and pricing isn't going to be part of my pricing
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When people call me, they just want to know what the concrete part of it's going to be
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So basically what we do is, you know, we'll come down. They'll call us up. We'll come down
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We'll take a look in advance and we'll tell them what we need the sub-base to be prepped to
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You know, the grade, the slope, the compaction, all that. And that's
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usually done when we show up. So when we show up with the forms, you know, we get we get it
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formed up. Typically we'll price a four inch concrete slab around a pool like this with either the
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wire mesh in it or the rebar in it. And sometimes we'll even put star foam under them if
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they live in an area where there's a lot of clay in the ground. You know, we're from Maine. So up here
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in New England we get four seasons of weather, spring, summer, fall, and winter. So
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I mean we got pretty harsh weather especially in the winter so if you got a bunch of clay in the ground
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you know they're obviously going to put gravel down but there could still be some clay way deep down so you could
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typically get some movement and the styrofoam helps keep the ground from freezing under the concrete so
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concrete's not a good insulator cold weather will go right through it and freeze the ground underneath it
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In this case they had really good gravel here. They had really good drainage
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so they didn't really need the styrofoam so we're just going four inches of concrete
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right over a really good gravel sub-base that was compacted really well
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Now for this job the homeowners actually installed their own pool. They couldn't get any pool companies. Everybody was so busy
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they couldn't get the pool companies to come and do it so they researched how to do it
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They bought all the stuff they rented the equipment so they got the pool in themselves
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They got everything graded. They just didn't want to tackle the concrete part of it. So I don't really blame them. You know, you only got one chance to do concrete right and
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It's pretty expensive if you don't do it right and you got to rip it out So as far as the pricing goes, I mean I don't charge like time and materials. I've never done that
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I never charged just for my time like by the hour I always priced everything out by the job and all the jobs I usually priced as by the square foot I never really priced by the yard some guys do and that perfectly fine if you want to do that there
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nothing wrong with that I've always priced by the square foot and most of my square
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foot prices are based on four inch thick concrete if it's thicker you know if it's five
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inches or six inches or eight inches or whatever then we just we add on for the extra
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concrete but you know if this if this pool deck was six inches thick versus four
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inches thick it's not really much more work to pour it's six inches thick than four
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inches so you know and if you're charging by the yard well it's going to be a heck of a
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lot more expensive for the customer if you're charging for a six inch deck versus a four
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inch deck so you know I'll just I'll charge them by the square foot for four inches
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and then I'll add on the extra yardage for for the two inches if it's a six inch
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deck plus a little bit extra you know I'll make a little bit of profit on the concrete but
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anyway my prices are generally always by the square foot and I've always had really good luck
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pricing things that way so so we'll come in we'll get the forms up we'll get it get the wire down
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we'll usually help them put the ladder in place if they have a railing we'll get that in place
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the way we want it so we know that's exactly where it needs to go we'll make sure the skimmer
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there that little white square thing the skimmer part is where it needs to go if it needs to be higher
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and that's basically the as far as the prep goes that's that's part of the prep so when i price something
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like this you know i'm figuring on we use a 4,000 PSI concrete here with fiber mesh so it's got
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the wire mesh in it and the fiber mesh so i'm figuring on about two dollars and 50 cents a square foot
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just for the concrete i figure about a dollar a square foot for the wire mesh you know we go get it we bring it here
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we lay it so a dollar a square feet for that and then you know to do the forms
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and everything I got about another two dollars and fifty cents a square
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foot to get the forming done so that gets me right about six bucks a square
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foot just just for the the forming the concrete and the wire and then my
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profit and labor to go into the pouring and finishing here is about
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four bucks a square foot. So my total is typically around 10 bucks a square foot to do a pool deck
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a basic pool deck like this. That pays for all the materials. It pays for the labor and it
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includes the profit in there. And I've always had really good luck that way. I've never had to do
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really a job costing. Now I have broken everything down before and I write it all down and I break it
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all out into little bitty pieces like how much the concrete's going to be exactly what the cost
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of the wire is going to be the time it takes for us to do the forming the travel back and forth
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you know i i do break that down and i figure it out but i don't do that on every single job
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so i i do make sure that i'm making a profit on every job but i typically don't break every little
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piece down on every job because i mean what we're doing a job a day so once i do it on one of these like
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this I know that as long as any any other pools we do this year I'm going to fall right in
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that same range if I'm making profit on this one and everything goes well on all the other
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ones then we're making profit on all of them so for a thousand square foot pool deck like
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this it's about a ten thousand dollar job for me you know and that includes we'll come down
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maybe not the day before it could be a week before two weeks before and get the forms up
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and get it prepped and then get it into the schedule for porn It could so it could be two weeks we got this thing sitting there ready for us or it could be a day We come down the day before and get it ready But typically it a day
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for the prep and then another day to come back to pour and finish. And sometimes we'll just
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hang around after we get it finished for two or three hours and strip the forms that day like we
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did on this one here because this was about an hour and a half away from the shop. So rather than
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leave the forms on and then drive all the way back down here on a different day and make a third trip we'll just hang out until we think we can
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get the forms stripped off safely and we'll just pull our pins strip our forms and then that'll be it
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and then the homeowners you know they'll hire daily they'll come back in at least these ones will
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come back and regrade the outside or they'll have some landscapers come back landscape it put the fence
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up and then they'll be done like that but you know the reason i charge what i charge is
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because they're not just paying me for my time here. They're paying for my knowledge, my experience
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You know, you never know. With concrete, it doesn't always act the same
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especially if you have a four-season type of state like we do
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You've got to know how the concrete's going to act and how to finish it when it does
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when something a problem does arise. Like, how do you deal with that problem
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Like with us, if you're pouring in, Really, if you're pouring early in the spring, it could be below freezing
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It could be 30 degrees here when we start. And then by noon time 1 o'clock, it could be up to 60 degrees
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That really affects the concrete differently than if you start pouring in the middle of the summer when it's 60 degrees when you show up
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and you get done pouring and finishing in the afternoon and it's 80 degrees. So or late in the fall when it's real windy, you know, how do you handle problems when the surface
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is drying out. It's really dry. It's really difficult the mag float, but the underneath is still
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real soft and jelly-like, but you got to get on it because the surface is drying out. So you've got to
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you've got to charge accordingly based on that experience right there, your knowledge level
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your skill level, and it's fine to charge a premium or to charge a lot of money based on what
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your knowledge and your skill level is and your reputation, you know. People want to know when they
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hire you that you do a good job if you got a good reputation it's perfectly fine to charge accordingly
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based on your reputation and you want you want to make sure you're charging enough like you you don't want
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to underbid or undercut people that do work just as good as you you guys all kind of want to be in
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the same ballpark you want to work together it's perfectly fine to talk with each other like where
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I live there's there's probably 10 different concrete guys around me that do similar
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stuff that we do and you know if we talk and say hey you know you know what are you getting this year
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for this what are you getting for that let's make sure we're all in the same ballpark i don't want to be
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way under you or way over you you know so it's if you do similar work if you have the similar
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skill set with other people in your area talk pricing with them there's nothing wrong with that i mean
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i don't feel like i'm competing with everybody because my reputation the way it is the phone
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doesn't stop ringing. There's plenty of work out there if your reputation is good. So don't worry about
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not having enough work because your pricing is different than everybody else, you know
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But you typically want to be fair with everybody. You don't want to, you don't want to be way
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overpriced because even if your reputation is good like if I 10 bucks a square foot here and everybody else in the general area is say six bucks a square foot that a lot higher than everybody else And word going to get out that you way
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way high. And you could lose some really good jobs, you know, based on that. I've never really had
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that problem because I've always been open with, you know, all the guys around me. So it's perfectly
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fine with that. And if you want to know like what I charge for stuff, just, you know, whatever
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email me or something. I'll talk with you about it. I don't mind telling anybody what I charge
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So that's kind of what this is. This is a thousand square feet. Most pool decks in Maine
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I'd say the average size is probably between 600 and 800 square feet. A lot of people will go
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four to five to six feet wide around the pool. This one's basically six feet on three sides and eight feet on another, so it's a little bit
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bigger than the average pool deck in Maine. Nice size pool deck
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I'm kind of lucky. I got, you know, Darren and Luke are really highly skilled. They can do pretty much anything when it comes to pouring and finish and concrete
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Darren's got over 30 years experience. Luke's in his 20 years of experience
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I've got 42 years of experience. Tia over there has been working for four summers
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So she can pretty much finish concrete with, you know, she can broom it
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She can edge. She can groove. She can run a power trial. She can hand trial
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So that makes a big difference as far as skill level. So we got four pretty skilled people
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And then in the summers, you know, once school gets out, we got, we actually pick up a
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school teacher who's been working with me for, I don't know, 25, 30 years
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so he's really highly skilled too and we got him for about 10 weeks in the summer so that really helps too
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but that's basically how we how we price a job like this again 10 bucks a square foot let me know down
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the comments you know if you got any questions about that if i didn't cover something and you got a
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question about it or you know if you price differently than me if you price by the yard you know why do you
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price by the yard versus the square foot things like that So again, you know, finish up. We're going to get this thing broomed up. This was early in the spring. It was kind of chilly in the morning then it warmed up really good in the afternoon. So the concrete actually finished really nice. The company we used has a blend of 50% three quarter stone and 50% three eight stone. So it's a pretty nice finish in concrete. 4,000 PSI. It was pretty creamy. We only had to mag float this out once. The timing on it. We got on it really
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they're really just at the right time. That one little piece in the shade over there, you see where I am right now, Brooming, that one little piece
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we actually had to wait on that because the shade just didn't dry quite as quick as the sun part
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So I finished this last square right here, Brumman, and then we had to wait about 15, 20 minutes for that part in the shade, and we were all done
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But that's basically it, and again, if you got any more, if you want to learn estimating, if you want to learn
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pricing if you want to learn how to do concrete like we do you can join the concrete underground
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that's my private membership uh the link is down in the description below guys but
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anyway any more questions leave them down in the comments well thanks for watching we'll see you on
