Installation jobs are often plagued with access challenges, harsh slopes and drainage issues. Here’s how contractors tackle tough sites with proper planning and innovative uses of equipment.

Bill Schwab knows a thing or two about challenging installations. In fact, he seeks them out. “If it’s an easy job, there’s too much access for unlicensed companies or companies who hire illegal aliens,” says the owner of Naturescape Landscape in Encinitas, Calif. “They underbid and can destroy our universe.”

So Schwab pursues difficult projects. This tactic has allowed him to develop a high-end focus – with average residential price tags around $1.5 million. “If you find a niche that others can’t do without highly specialized equipment, then you can do really well.”

So what defines difficult? For Schwab it typically comes down to lack of site access created as a result of mega-sized homes and teeny-tiny yards. In his area, a half-acre yard is considered huge. Often, such yards only have a 4-foot wide gate, so Schwab relies heavily on specialized equipment.
 
One time, Schwab rented an H53 helicopter service to install 22 Canary Island palm trees. The cost for the day, $4,800, was about the same as a crane rental. “Sometimes we really have to think outside the box,” he says. “It got the job done, what else can you say?”
 
Other contractors agree that accessibility is the No. 1 factor that deems a site “difficult.”
 
“For me, challenging work sites are ones in completely built-out neighborhoods,” says Bruce Gaudette, owner of Land Hoe! in Mukilteo, Wash. “A healthy percentage of my work is in backyards so the challenge is how to get equipment and supplies from the front of the house to the back.”
 
But accessibility isn’t just about a site’s size. “Limited access combined with severe grade changes and poor drainage conditions usually create challenging sites,” says Sal Masullo, senior design for Ireland Gannon Associates, Muttontown, N.Y.
 
For all of these challenges, contractors say their top lines of defense are planning and equipment.
PLAN FOR SUCCESS. The No. 1 step for any job – especially a potentially challenging one – is a site evaluation, contractors say.
 
“Before we even begin to give out numbers, we go meet with the customer, take a look at the site and the challenging factors and get the lay of the land,” says Mark Arsenault, owner of Green Monster Landscapes in Sanbornville, N.H. “Everything is done on an individual basis to make sure we don’t scrimp on pricing because there is so much variation with each job.”
 
Gaudette agrees. “Every site is unto itself,” he says. “You have to make assessments one site at a time.”
 
Some of the first things contractors address are the soil conditions and drainage. “If you don’t identify the soil and drainage needs before you stick the first shovel in the ground, that’s going to cost you time and man hours,” Arsenault says.
 
Often, installation contractors are required to “rearrange the topography” before a job begins, Gaudette says. This may include regrading the site and/or installing drainage systems to address surface water concerns.
 
Before an installation, Ireland Gannon Associates takes core soil samples a foot deep or more to identify a site’s general soil conditions and to evaluate the type of drainage system that may be required, Masullo says. Another key step is creating a topographic map of the site. “Then we can design with as much information as possible in terms of grade,” he says. To create this map, he’ll establish a fixed point on the site, like a door sill, take panoramic photos of the site and determine whether elevations are above or below that fixed point. Often someone in-house at Ireland Gannon Associates will draw this map by hand, but if it’s really challenging – a 20 percent change in slope, for example – the firm will hire a surveying company to make the map.
 
Before an installation, sequencing is one of the first things Gaudette looks at. Shortly after a design is accepted and a contract is signed, he and a foreman walk the site with the landscape plan to get an idea for the job’s material-staging requirements. “Every home, depending on how it sits in the neighborhood, only has so much space for staging materials,” he says, noting limited staging space can pose challenges for the flow of the installation. For example, it may restrict a contractor’s ability to have vendors deliver materials directly to a site, requiring them to be delivered to the contractors’ facility and then trucked in as they’re needed.
 
During the assessment period, it’s also crucial to identify any other obstacles, fences (and whether panels or gates need to be removed), trees (whether you need to remove them or bring in mats or plywood to protect roots) and utility lines.
 
“We’re finding more frequently that utility lines aren’t being installed to their preferred depths, so we have to be sure to use locating services,” Gaudette says. “We plan ahead, get our locates done, don’t obliterate the locate markers and then we dig by hand in those spots until we know the digging zone is safe.”
EVALUATING EQUIPMENT. During the installation itself, smart equipment use is the best way to make a challenging project easier. No one machine is a panacea; rather contractors employ a variety of standard and specialized machines to get the jobs done.
 
When the problem is limited access due to the size of a site, many contractors turn to compact equipment. “If it wasn’t for compact equipment, I don’t know if people could afford or would want to pay for what we do,” says Schwab, citing the labor savings of mini skid-steers and compact utility loaders. These machines are favorable for residential work, too, because they typically fit through gates and don’t require removing fence panels, trees or other obstacles.
 
Gaudette agrees. “The best solution is to be able to put machinery to use; we try to handle material as little as possible by hand,” he says. Gaudette thinks back to a recent job where a pallet of wall blocks was moved with a compact loader in five minutes. If done by hand, moving that material would have taken 120 minutes of man time, he says, not to mention the fatigue his men would have sustained completing such a labor-intensive task.

For contractors who typically work on challenging sites, it’s common to find tracked rather than wheeled equipment in their fleets, says Arsenault.
 
“With our hilly terrain in New Hampshire, we’ve gone to tracks with all of our equipment,” he says. That wasn’t the case when he first started out, but he soon realized that the extra cost for equipment with tracks has allowed his crews greater access on slopes and sites with poor drainage. He estimates upgrading to tracks costs $3,000 to $5,000 more on a piece of compact equipment and more than $10,000 on a full-size loader.
 
In addition to the typical arsenal of landscape equipment, sometimes contractors have to think big – like Schwab did when he called in a helicopter. Schwab and other installation contractors frequently use cranes to hoist materials into tight spaces; another solution Schwab has employed is a portable conveyors system used to move aggregate material into tight backyards, saving an estimated four day’s worth of man hours. (See “Specialty Tools for Challenging Sites,” on page 30.)
 
Schwab also swears by mechanized wheelbarrows. “Many of them can carry a cubic yard of material and you can move it in minutes,” he says, comparing it to a standard wheelbarrow that carries a few cubic feet of material and requires significant manpower to get the job done. They might seem pricey at $2,500 to $12,000 apiece, but contractors need to evaluate how much time specialized equipment will save compared to completing tasks manually (see “Calculating Costs,” on page 32).
 
Arsenault hasn’t yet used too many of these “outside the box” concepts yet, but he’s considered conveyors for moving material into locations that aren’t accessible by wheelbarrow or compact equipment. “If it can save on labor, I’ll consider it,” he says. “A lot of people don’t understand that labor is always the most expensive portion of the job. The equipment, as expensive as it is, saves on the labor and the total cost of doing the jobs.” LL