Not sure what to think of it... kind of disappointing. At first he asked what my budget was and I was like $4,000. The size of the pond is 100 x 50 which is about 1/8 of an acre.
I know prices can vary from location to location... let me give you an example of how cheap stuff is around here. You can get a new 1500 SQfoot house built including land for around 120K. So stuff is fairly cheap in my neck of the woods.
Anyways, everywhere I'm reading says around 10-20K an acre. I just took the top figure, 20K and divided it by 8 for the size pond I'm building. That gives you 2500. I know the smaller the pond the more it'll cost per acre... so that's why I upped my budget to 4000.
Then everywhere I'm reading people said they can dig a 1 acre per week which is almost 1/4 acre a day. Well mine is 1/8th of an acre... so I was figuring a day or two MAX (2,000 a day).
He said that he doesn't have to bring his big machine, he could probably dig it with his smaller equipment but he said it'll definitely take longer the 2 days and he charges 2K a day. Well why can't he bring his larger equipment in and have it done in that two day period? He also said he has never built a pond... this is his first. Which leads me to think from just basic economics... you should pay more for someone with more experience. I can see paying 5-6K to someone with a lot of experience... but someone with no pond building experience? Then he flat out told me that he can't guarantee it'll hold water.
He said he will call me back before the weekend with the final estimate. I'm guessing by the way he talked he's going to charge a min 6-8K with no pond experience, no guarantee it'll hold water, didn't have to much to say about building a hole for water runoff. This will be a dug pond, no dam.
Will every quote I get be like this? PLEASE HELP!! =)
Last edited by RickSample; 04/08/14 05:57 PM.
