Gardening quote- reasonable??

[Bigglesbilo85]

Hi. Hope you're all well.

We are getting quotes in for our garden to be done. 45sq m of porcelain paving with 21m of sleepers to be made. Nothing too fancy. The quotes are differing wildly though and we are such novices!! We are in the south west and need some help!

One was £4.5k ish all in but the guy would literally just lay the stuff, no plants. Then another quote from a landscaper who's work looks great has come in at £6.5k just for the paving as he charges £150 p/sq m of paving put in. That's before we get a quote for the sleepers (lord knows if we will get plants for that cash!!!). Its just getting out of our budget but we don't know what's realistic and cant do the work ourselves.

Can anyone please help with their experience?

Thank you xx

We are having around 100m2 porcelain plus raised beds in sleepers, a water feature, drains (including acro drain by bifolds) and it is costing about £14k in the south east. We are supplying the tiles and grout. I would say your quote looks about right.

Make sure though you get the spec of how it is being laid as it is quite important with porcelain to do it right otherwise it will crack. Are you having drainage as this adds to the cost.

No one has said anything about drainage. We are on a new build. All they've both said is what the quote is and we are just a bit confused as to why they are so different. People are telling us people charge £100 or so a day for labour on top of parts but this second guy is charging £150 p sqm of tiles we are laying which seems to be what is escalating the second quote. We don't know how common that is or if this is just someone making the most of demand in the area?

We've told him what we want, we haven't had any design work etc, just a straight rectangle of paving, sleepers round the edge. That's all. I've picked the slabs. Again, complete novice over here!! Thanks again!

You want to make sure it slopes away from the house to a drain. With porcelain you also want a decent base - at a minimum well compacted aggregate and make sure the tiles are on a full bed of mortar rather than dot and dab. Some people prefer to lay on a concrete base but that is more expensive. I would ask both companies what preparation is involved as this takes the most time and expense, especially it they are excavating and disposing of soil.

Check they are following all the steps here
www.bradstone.com/inspiration-and-advice/how-to-lay-porcelain-paving/

Where are you? A day rate in the south east seems to be about £150 min.

We are Bristol. He isn't charging a day rate. He's charging £150 p/sqm of tile that he is laying (inclusive of tile and labour). Which gets us to the £6.5k cost. Then on top of that we are yet to get his cost for the sleepers. He's also said 2-3 weeks for patio and 1 week for sleepers. Every person we've spoke to about this (friend and family) has been shocked about this, but not sure if that's lack of experience.

Is this cost because he's holding himself out as a landscaper even though he's just doing a simple build job in this case?

I had builders in recently and asked for a quote to lay porcelain tiles on a patio that’s roughly 16msq and he said that labour would be about £2k, if I sourced the tiles.

He explained that he would basically need to lay a concrete base to lay them properly and it takes a lot of time to get that prepped to lay them properly, would need to get the concrete truck in etc.

You need to get another quote.

We recently did our patio and had more than one person tell us they don't even quote for porcelain as it's so much harder to lay well, and takes much longer. Try asking how much for non porcelain. You may be surprised at the difference