Staying a Cut Above

Sub-base and base compaction with the correct equipment will help insure quality installations on a job.

For 10 years, Bill Gardocki thought he was doing things the right way at Interstate Landscape in New Hampshire. That was until he took a class on cutting pavers, which was an eye-opener. Turns out, Gardocki wasn't doing work as efficiently as he could. After he would mark pavers for cutting, he would cut them with a table saw. But the teacher didn't even own a table saw, which shocked Gardocki. The teacher used a technique called "cutting in place," which changed a lot for Gardocki.

"When I started doing that, I was cutting literally hundreds and hundreds of hours a year out of our labor in cutting," he says. "It completely transformed my business into a much more efficient business because of the technique of cutting in place."

Gardocki will be sharing his knowledge on compaction and cutting, along with other lessons in hardscape work during his talk, "Grow Your Business through Paver Installation," at Hardscape North America, which is held in conjunction with the GIE+EXPO. He's scheduled to speak Thursday, Oct. 28.

"Once I understood compaction and cutting, I bought all new equipment and I completely changed how we did those two chores and it completely changed the efficiency on my crews," he says.

When it comes to compaction, the key is having some way of measuring the compaction that you've done on your site.

"Ninety-nine percent of contractors I talk to have no way to measure the compaction they've done on the site," he says. "So they don't know if they've over compacted or under compacted and anywhere from 90-95 percent of failures that occur on a hardscape project occur because of improper compaction.

"So if you've got 90 percent of your failures occurring because of one specific task, and you're not testing that task, how do you know if you're going to have a failure or not. Efficiency wise, if you're not testing that, then you're really rolling the dice as to whether you are going to get call backs or not."

Gardocki will also talk about forming a hardscape crew. You'll need someone who is ICPI and NCMA certified. You can hire someone already certified or send someone to take the classes to become certified.

"(That way) if they are going to be doing any retaining wall installation, they're not going to be putting themselves in jeopardy of liability because they don't have guys that truly understand the geometry and so forth of where they can get themselves in trouble with retaining walls," he says. "Certification to me is extremely important for the hardscape crew."

A landscaper should also have someone on the crew who has worked in the hardscape industry.

Gardocki says a landscaper should look for someone who's been a laborer on a crew for a couple of years and wants the chance to be a foreman. Joining local landscape associations to build relationships is a good way to recruit talent, Gardocki says.

"So, the real safe way is to have someone that you've known put the word out," he says. "It's very difficult finding an employee like that just cold out of an ad in the newspaper. Gardocki will also talk about how to select materials for a hardscape job.

"Don't mix and match paver thicknesses on the job site," he says. "When selecting pavers, and if you're going to be mixing colors and mixing styles, try to always maintain the same thickness in your paver selection."

The author is associate editor at Lawn & Landscape. He can be reached at bhorn@gie.net.