CHRISTMAS IN MARCH - MikeMinute009

Just got to the shop this morning and had a little present show up. Getting this little guy delivered. In the back there you can see is snowplow.

Alright, so we got the dump truck in action. Already.

Running across to get the first delivery on the new dump truck.

We're building up the side board on the dump truck up here. In the dump trucks, we're building up sideboards. We sit down in this groove here.

All right, today we're at a city project. One of our clients has the apartment complex over there.

You can see through the trees.

And this is a city stormwater facility though.

So inside here is where it's kind of a retention pond.

But they need all of the berm here cleared out of all these trees.

So that way the root system doesn't.

Affect the stormwater facility. So today is clearing a lot of brush and then taking out these cedars, chipping them. So we'll go around here and see.

What the crew's up to. We got a 12 or 16 inch.

Chipper today we are using to get rid of all these branches large trees.

Using these metal heads to clear out the glass base at the base here.

And we got the three chipper.

A little bit delayed because we got something stuck inside of the blades here. Gotta get it out. So we got a whole bunch of debris we got chipped through here. You can see here making some progress all along here. Alright, so more progress up here in Semiyamu. Taking out some more plants, putting in a whole bunch of different types of rhododendrons. We have some dark leaves, purple. And then we got Nova Zembla, the red ones, five of those on this property. So installing a whole bunch of mulch. Putting this bed on the side of the driveway today the concrete is being installed over here, goes around that way. And then today we also had to fix some parts of this raised bed. You can see we put this sheathing as a way to waterproof the wood.

That was there because we didn't.

We're going to fill this retaining wall up with some good soil. And we don't want the moisture touching any part of the foundation or the wood in there and rotting that away. So use some metal sheathing and then spray paint that with a flat black. And then on the side here, making this look nice out with a beautiful view. So these are three Nova Zemblas. They have the rhododendrons but they have really nice red flowers. And then up front there's more purple. So we go around the back here. We can see they're still doing the concrete paths. Things are starting to look good over on this side. A couple days they will cut it and take away all the stakes and things like that. But right now just, just finished laying it and pouring it today. And then you can see just started planting all the wax myrtles there which will go all along the side of the pathway as well here. Got the hedge going in here of the wax myrtles. And so yeah, pretty much finished here. Got 20 more wax myrtles we're gonna have to install in a couple weeks. A little bit low volume here at the nurseries. That's pretty much it. Alright. So we got this lawn here. It's very, very old, nice house, but it's very bumpy in here. Lots and lots of moss. And so we're gonna essentially be tearing out the entire lawn, putting in new soil, probably a good 1 to 2 inches of some good sandy loam lawn mix soil and then installing either sod or hydro seeding this whole area. So just did a bunch of measurements for this. The reason we couldn't use the software was this. So usually we'd shoot from above using satellite software to do these measurements. However the trees get in the way. So did all the measurements for this. We're going to extend this bed out because of these roots and then we're going to build a retaining wall along this, a natural stone retaining wall. And as you can see, there's lots and lots of bumps. It's very uneven. So we'll grade this whole area, we'll compact it with a roller. And the challenging part is there's a current existing irrigation system. So we gotta be careful of those. We don't wanna break any pipes. And we also have to tie in some new irrigation because when they put the irrigation in before, they didn't have any drip lines for any of the plants. So get that stuff installed, get that taken care of. Gotta look at the irrigation, see how deep the pipes are, see what kind of equipment we can bring in here to tear out this lawn and install the new soil. So lots and lots of moss. As you can tell, very wet, very bumpy. Hopefully we can fix that.

Alright. So wrapping up here at the cleanup, installed the cobbles, cleaned up a lot of the moss, old growth cut out too big of these birch trees here. So covered those stumps up, got the moss out, putting all this new rock and now the new growth can be seen on the grasses. Took out the invading bushes there, put in some nice drain rock, see the koi fish. And just about to clean up some of this mud and things on the driveway in the backyard. We got rid of that tree, the big maple that was growing onto the gutters, put it in some nice drain rock, removed the rhododendron, transplanted it over to here and put a flagstone pathway. We're still just getting some of these leaves in here. Pathway we put in over here just on the side of the house. So quick cleanup and little bit of tree trimming and ivy trimming here. Got some of these branches cut up too.

Alright, so we got a two day project here. This is the estimate, kind of our job description and notes that we'll be working with. And this is a two day project. Should get most of it done tomorrow when we have a crew of five or six guys here today. Charlie's just gonna be cleaning up a lot of the debris, getting it ready for tomorrow. When we get the mini skid steer here, start installing gravel and things. Challenge with this job is getting to this gate. So it's not big enough for a big skid steer. So we're gonna have to use a mini skid steer and the walk behind ones. So we're gonna clear out all these beds, make them look nicer, rake them out, get rid of all the weeds and the moss, and be planting a couple of these arborvitae for some privacy along this, against their neighbor's fence there. And then over on this side of the house we'll be clearing out the beds as well over here. But then right here we're putting in a pad for their pool. So we'll be doing a limestone base because there's a bit of a grade here that goes off this direction. So we'll be putting a limestone base, compacting that and then putting a sand base as well to clear all this old debris, old plants, some not so great looking underbrush, cleaning all the leaves out of that bed in the back here. This is the main project, so we'll bring this little skid steer back here and do some damage over there where there's a big pile of debris. There's going to be a nice flower garden installed. So we're bringing a bunch of garden soil in here. And again we have another gate here, so not easy to get back here. Access is always a problem on jobs like this. Makes it most challenging. So there's gonna be a garden back here. Right now there's a whole bunch of debris and junk. Charlie will be getting rid of this using the chainsaw and cut it all up and haul it out of Here. Then from up there we'll dump the with the skid, steer over here. Putting in some quarry. Blast larger rock along this really steep grade so it doesn't roll anywhere underneath. We'll put road fabric so you don't have to deal with weeds or anything like that. They essentially want to eliminate this grass back here because it's such a pain to have to mow getting through all the gates and just the access and the steep grade that goes off here. So we put in road fabric down, putting clear crushed gravel all throughout here. Taking out these rhododendrons that are kind of blocking their view of the ocean, which is out there.

Lots of cleanup tomorrow that we're doing.

We got a rhododendron there. Putting in the pool pad now here at the limestone and the sand. And then make a big marks here where tomorrow we'll be filling all this in with lawn mix soil and then seeding it over again. Get a good looking lawn again. And in the back here, nigh unto completion, the garden is pretty much finished. Got about a foot of soil throughout that whole area. Got gravel with road fabric underneath the entire thing. All over here underneath the deck. No more weeds or lawn to care of.

All right, so this is the finished.

Product in the backyard here we got the garden and rear escape for all the gravel.

Starting to put all the sod back in. Pressure washing off the sidewalks and looking good here.

This area will be for the pool. And then over here we got more shots being laid down.

And we pressure washing this whole area. So I'm just gonna run over like controls just so everyone's comfortable when they sit in here. This right here is just this thing on top right now. You see it's on right now. It's off. That should never be on unless you're dumping or like in the road some way. Parking brake is here. So it went out. This is your parking brake went in. This right here is going to be for the snowplow. It's already wired and everything for the snow plow that's over there. Don't even worry about this here. So this is. This thing up here is really tricky. You obviously just have your. Your gear shift, but then this is your high and lowest. And then it would only open like a few inches. And then you could drive forward as it's dumping and essentially spread it out. But we're not going to do that pretty much ever.

What's really cool though, all right, this is a small little landscaping project today. We're going to be Essentially trying to get some road fabric down on these beds and we're going to put an edging along the sides, some of the black 4 inch edging and then we'll put the road fabric down and then gravel on top. Don't they have been getting a whole bunch of these weeds and they're tired of pulling these all summer long. They don't want to spray because they have dogs. So we put in that floor orange edging in along here, putting in road fabric and then putting gravel on top of it.

All right, so the past week it's essentially rained every single day. Just driving right now on the way to another estimate it's been raining and raining and raining and kind of getting tired of it, but just kind of tough to keep the guys morale high and everyone happy about spring when it is pouring rain. Super miserable. It's still pretty cold outside but we've been really busy and fighting mud and losing or getting zero turn stuck in the mud. A whole bunch of. So within like an hour or so I'm going to be doing an interview, podcast interview with Omar Solomon, who's the CEO of College Hunks Hauling Junk which is a franchise, it's around the entire country and really a business model that we're trying to implement at Augusta Lawn Care because as you know we are franchising the business and looking for franchisees right now.

So I'm just looking here at a couple of snow blades, snow plows for skin skid steer. So this one in the front here is an eight footer and this is a ten footer in the back and they just attach right on the back to a skid steer. And so we'd be trying to get this to complement the dump truck blade that we got, big knife one that we got for the dump truck.

Alright, so another one of our one day jobs. We have three of these going today but I'm at this one. We are going to be building a ledge wall along this flower bed. Right now they have this brick edging in here. You can see.

It'S kind of started to get filled over. Not really creating edge too much between the lawn and bed. So we're going to clean this up. We're going to create just a small ledge, a rock wall with these, a whole bunch more of that and they'll create it all the way around the side, fill it in with a good garden blend. So we'll get rid of some of these plants they don't want. And in the backyard here we got another flower bed that we're going to be raising it up a bit, getting rid of some of these plants, putting in mulch. So a quick one day job here. Okay, so this is the edge stone that we're putting in back, filling it with some good soil for the garden. So still building that up, we have about one and a half stones that are buried just for a foundation. And then it goes all the way around side there.

You get some crazy estimates when you start doing lawn care landscaping.

Let's check this one out. So here it looks like either some sort of abandoned barn or house. And we had his relatives of a 90 year old gentleman contact us and ask us to do some work. And this is what we're looking at. So this is the front gate. Gonna have to clear out the driveway, install a gravel driveway and then clear 20ft perimeter around that entire barn structure thing. So I don't know how wide they want this driveway. So if I have to meet them in person.

So there's kind of two ways we could do this job. One is get a bobcat attachment, put it on the skid steer and go to town. Or we could do this by hand with three or four guys with weed whackers and put metal heads on them that will tear all these blackberries out. I'm leaning towards option number one.

No trespassing sign. Maybe I shouldn't go back here.

Okay. The bathtub in there, look at that. Oh, it's a propane tank. There's a cat just ran by.

Look at that.

Check out that truck.

Mercy.

Okay.