# Brush Clearing Quote help??



## Rodeo109 (Jan 24, 2020)

Hello!
I really hope you guys can help me out. I've got a job to quote, and not sure which direction to go. I know it's hard to price things without seeing it in person. It's roughly 7,500sq ft of thick thorns and brush, most all of it on a slope. I'd use my weedeater with a brushcutting attachment on it, then rake it up. Although a mini excavator might be possible. There's 3 sections to it. The first section is 60x38. The second section is 27x90. The third is 55x52. These are all rough dimensions. Roughly 7,500 sq ft, or could be rounded to about 1/5 an acre. The ground is also very rocky, so I wouldn't be able to use a flail mower. There's old wood boards and broken glass among the brush, and random tractor tires that need to be hauled away. The owner wants a price for burning (which she's weary of) and a price for hauling it away. Her driveway is pretty steep and hard to get vehicles into, but not impossible. We don't have much overhead though, so pretty much everything is profit, except time. I outlined one of the sections so you could tell what the borders of it are, but it looks much smaller in photos.

She also possibly wants the land scraped of the roots/stumps so she can plant grass and not have the briars keep coming back. Which we would need the mini excavator for. And a separate price.


She also wants 3 sheds demolished and hauled away, if you could possibly help me out with that too. There's junk inside 2 of them that would need hauling off as well. One is 6x10, one is 17x11, one is 16x10. You have to go across a small 2-3ft wide creek to get to them though.


Any help would be so appreciated. I was thinking $1,000-$1,250 for whacking/raking/burning the briars at $0.13/sqft. And hauling would be extra. Is that too much? Too little? What would you guys charge? There's a lot more to it than the pictures show, but those are the only ones I have.


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## johninky (Jan 24, 2020)

do you have the option to just burn the sheds in place?


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## Rodeo109 (Jan 24, 2020)

johninky said:


> do you have the option to just burn the sheds in place?



Unfortunately, probably not lol. The owner is already kinda iffy about burning, and the only water access would be buckets of water. 
The place to haul briars or shed debris to is about 30min away.


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## rarefish383 (Feb 2, 2020)

Is it just you or do you have a crew. I could tell how long it would take ME to do it. I'd say something like " I can do this in two days at X dollars per man hour or, that comes to Y dollars per day for a two man crew. If I run into unforeseen problems, It may take an extra day, but not more than 3 days. If the junk in the sheds is scrap metal, is there a scrap yard where you might get gas money for a little extra.


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## KingBeee (Feb 3, 2020)

I think you're charging them low. $1800-$2000 for everything is fair


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## Brushwacker (Feb 3, 2020)

I work independently mostly and usually base my price by the hour and prefer to charge by the hour. Chainsawing and weedwacking usually $25, mostly big or tougher and more dangerous conditions, $30 working a safe moderate pace. If I had a lot of expensive new equipment would probably need to charge more.


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## capetrees (Feb 3, 2020)

If she's probably going to ask later about excavating the area and scraping the ground for grass, go to the end game. Never mind brush wacking it or burning stuff. Remove the sheds gone to the demo place and scrape/excavate the are in preparation for the grass. It'll probably be less cost to her considering she's not doing multiple projects. Figure it by the man hour, the excavator rental, the loads of crap you'll be removing/dumping and go from there. 1800-200 seems about right but then again, I'm not there in person.


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## svk (Feb 3, 2020)

capetrees said:


> If she's probably going to ask later about excavating the area and scraping the ground for grass, go to the end game. Never mind brush wacking it or burning stuff. Remove the sheds gone to the demo place and scrape/excavate the are in preparation for the grass. It'll probably be less cost to her considering she's not doing multiple projects. Figure it by the man hour, the excavator rental, the loads of crap you'll be removing/dumping and go from there. 1800-200 seems about right but then again, I'm not there in person.


This is the best advice.

Up here I can rent a skid steer and a dump trailer for $500 a day. If you pick the equipment up Friday night at close you do not need to return it until Monday morning. If you run the equipment for more than 8 hours on the meter it's 35 bucks an hour.

It would probably take you a couple hours to demolish/load the buildings and other junk, then you need to factor in time to the landfill from where you are times the number of trips. Once you get familiar with a skid steer, you can have those bushy areas fixed in no time.

I'd include planting grass seed in the bid and covering it with straw. Those hills might be prone to wash out if you take all of the vegetation off of them.


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## Brushwacker (Feb 4, 2020)

Rodeo109 said:


> Unfortunately, probably not lol. The owner is already kinda iffy about burning, and the only water access would be buckets of water.
> The place to haul briars or shed debris to is about 30min away.


When i burn trees and brush, l like to get it piled fairly tight, give it a bit of time and good drying weather,cover a section up on a good dry day with plenty of small branches, then when you have damp weather with no danger of fire spreading,pull the cover and the dry small branches will usually get hot enough to burn the damper wood in the remainderof the pile. Of course u need the time to wait out the weather.


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## MariHer75 (Jun 20, 2021)

Well, You should always try to standardize your prices such as per hour, per man power, equipment used, and extra work done. consider all these factors and set your price. It will make pricing easy for every job you do.


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