Profits From The Ground Up: Decks & Patios

In most cases, the key to this space is its functionality, which requires a different design and installation approach than the appearance-oriented landscape. This functionality is so critical to homeowners, in fact, that many people desire to extend the living area beyond the walls of the house and into the backyard.

Here is the perfect opportunity for adding a deck or a patio to that landscape proposal.

PICK YOUR SPOTS. Although not every landscape includes a deck or patio, they are popular enough to merit inclusion in the vast majority of residential landscape proposals.

“All jobs are good candidates for a patio or a deck,” asserted Pete Haran, vice president, Lipinski Landscape Contractors, Mt. Laurel, N.J.

Other contractors agreed with Haran about the popularity of these features. “Patios or decks are installed on about 30 percent of our residential jobs,” remarked Terry Wallace, president, Wallace Landscape Associates, Kennett Square, Pa., who added that their primary market for such features is residential renovations.

“I think people are thinking of landscaping more to create extended living areas instead of just foundation planting these days,” Wallace continued. “Renovations of substantial homes represent a market where customers have a mature view of what a landscape can be. The new homeowner, on the other hand, is more concerned with getting the outside of the home looking established.”

“We incorporate some type of deck or patio into 75 percent of our jobs,” noted Rick Winnestaffer, president, WinnScapes, Gahanna, Ohio. In particular, Winnestaffer has seen the market shift toward a preference for stone patios.

“Whether it’s concrete pavers or slate or some other element doesn’t matter, but decks aren’t as popular as they used to be,” he observed. “Wood decks really became popular about 20 years ago, and I think a lot of them are starting to hit the end of their life span. When they looked good 10 years ago and people saw them on the neighbors’ houses, they wanted a wood deck too. Now people are realizing that pressure-treated wood won’t last forever.”

Once the patio or deck has been sold, the key then becomes locating it in the proper spot.

“It’s very important to anticipate how the traffic will flow through the yard,” Wallace said.

“Contractors also need to find out how the customers plan on entertaining guests in the yard, how many people they expect to have use the patio or deck, whether there will be small children around and other factors that could influence the design,” added Haran.

And even in cases where customers reject the idea of installing a patio or deck, it is important to find out if they have long-term plans for such a job and take that into consideration when designing the rest of the landscape. “You don’t want to make the customer pay to have things done twice, such as ripping up the landscape or the irrigation system,” advised Haran.

TRACKING TRENDS. As patios have become more popular, so has the use of ornate or colorful blocks of concrete to create the patio.

“Every landscape installation we do has some type of pavers going into it,” recognized Haran. “Now we’re getting into the stamped and colored concrete to offer clients a wider pallet of options to choose from.”

A benefit for contractors who sell a job with pavers can be increased revenue, according to some contractors. “Paved surfaces carry much better margins than wood decks because anyone with a truck and a hammer can build decks,” commented Winnestaffer. “Handling paver installations requires having at least $5,000 worth of equipment and a lot more expertise.”

Lipinski Landscape Contractors may charge twice as much for wood decks as for a paved patio, however. “Working with the pavers is very time consuming, and there’s not a lot of money in it if you make mistakes,” admitted Haran. “We’re getting $15 to $20 per square foot for decks and about $7 to $15 per square foot for pavers.”

Tynes Stringfellow, president, Jubilee Landscape, Fairhope, Ala., noted an opportunity to sell additional work by combining a water feature to a patio installation.

“We try to do a lot of things to incorporate nature into the design,” Stringfellow noted. “We also like to install butterfly gardens right around a patio or deck and use hummingbird attractions to try and bring nature into the space.”

Another trend Haran has observed has been the jump in popularity for retaining walls, and his company has even found effective ways of integrating these structures into patio construction.

“With homes that have a back door raised off of the ground, we used to build a smaller deck that stepped down to the patio,” he recalled. “With retaining walls, however, we encourage clients to build terrace-type walls and inset the pavers into them for a raised deck.”

Doing so offers the landscape designer a number of different options from that point. “We may terrace the entire patio to eliminate unattractive railings, or we might surround the lowest terrace with planters,” Haran explained. “The deck area isn’t actually getting larger, but it’s being split up into a smaller area on top that steps down into a larger area designed for sitting and entertaining. This makes the deck essentially a transition area down to the patio.”

Wallace is also a fan of using decks and patios as transition vehicles from the house to the landscape. “We like adding water features or planting containers along the edges of the structure to create some flexibility,” she noted. “Designers can also use lighting around the edge to extend the area’s use into the evening.”

Stringfellow encourages the use of both planters and lighting, but said both present challenges. “We like to irrigate all of our containers, so we sleeve a line off of the original system, run it up through the surface of the porch into the bottom of the container and put a bubbler on it,” he explained. “With lighting, our goal is to create a natural moonlight effect that uses the shadows without being obtrusive. That looks a lot nicer than direct lighting coming off of the house.”

RAISE THE SUB. Contractors experienced in patio and deck construction quickly caution that it is not a simple service to offer, especially with the increasing use of materials such as concrete and stone. This creates the additional challenge of finding employees qualified to handle such complex work.

“We have three crews working exclusively on the hardscape jobs,” Haran added. “You really need to have a detail person doing this work.”

“The average foreman should never be allowed to do a patio,” agreed Winnestaffer. “There are so many things that have to be considered when you’re working with pavers, and these aren’t very forgiving jobs. With a deck, you can add a step or cut off a board if you need to, but you don’t have that luxury with stone or concrete.”

Many companies rely heavily on subcontractors to handle part or all of the patio or deck installation.

“We’re looking for a subcontractor to handle all of our paver installations larger than 300 square feet,” noted Haran, despite having three crews working exclusively on paver installations. “Because these jobs are so time consuming, we’ll only do the larger ones from July to September or December to February – but not during any prime planting times.”

“We hired an experienced construction manager who had run his own company to handle all of our decks and patio projects,” noted Wallace. “He also helps to manage the subcontractors we still have to work with on some jobs and to make sure the jobs are done correctly.”

Stringfellow relied on subcontractors for awhile, but as the volume of patio and deck installations increased, so did the headaches associated with identifying reliable professionals in the different fields and working around their schedules. “Now, we handle it all in-house with a brick mason to lay the stone, a carpenter for porches, an architect, a foreman and a couple of crew members,” he explained. “We keep them specialized on this type of work so that’s all they do.”