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Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jamison is the author of five bestselling books including Cut that Grass and make that Cash and his latest Level up youp Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
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Are you tired of leaving money on the table or worse, installing a beautiful pallet of sod or maybe a bunch of pallets of sod, only to have the customer call you down the road saying hey Paul, all that sod you installed died? Well, I've had this experience before. It was actually 10 pallets of sod. It was a nightmare. So sod installations can be one of the most lucrative high ticket upsells services for your lawn care landscaping business. But if you don't follow the exact protocol that I share today that I've learned through the school of experience, it can turn this big profit job into an absolute nightmare. And unfortunately, the Nightma distillery that I have, you know, I experienced it all too well. It wasn't a dream. It was, it was a real life. Thousands of dollars lost, lots of stress. It was, it was a, it was a eye opening moment. So today I'm going to break down the complete SOD installation masterclass step by step. How to perfectly prep the dirt, the correct way to install turf, and most importantly the the biggest lesson I learned is how to actually price the job so you maximize your profits and how to set up the contract and everything so that you save your butt in case the customer doesn't water the sod and it'll die. So let's get right into it. If you're new to the program, by the way, my name is Paul Jameson. I'm down here in the south and I have seen a lot of sod installed a lot of sod some, seen a lot of good sod work and a lot of bad sod work, because sod's actually, it's kind of like paint. I don't know if I. I don't know why my Instagram algorithms paint, but I get all these painting videos and it will show, like, when you do fresh paint, it will show, like, if you really look carefully. I feel like I'm a painting novice now, but it will show you, like, every little single bump and imperfection underneath what you paint over. You just can't take a wall that's got a bunch of bumps and stuff on it and paint over it and think you're going to be cool. It's grass is the same way. So if you're doing a sod installation, you can't just throw sod on top of the ground and expect it to look good. You have to first do, in my opinion, one of the most important parts of the sod installation, and that's the actual prep work. So I know this is controversial, but what most people do, and I'm not suggesting this, I'll share some alternatives, but when you do a sod installation, you have to first look at. All right, well, what are we. We're moving here. Like, what's pre existing in the yard? And one thing that works, and I don't recommend this, but it's the most common way to do this is folks will just spray a herbicide called glyphosate. Wherever that touches the ground. It's gonna, it's gonna kill off the vegetation if you, you know, have the proper ratios or whatever. It's. It's nicknamed Roundup or that's one of the brand names of, of which is really, I think, like, don't quote me on this, but Maybe it's like 41% glyphosate or something like that. But anyway, you got to get rid of where you're going to put down the side. You got to get rid of all the current turf, weeds, debris, all of that stuff. So that's one way to do it. Or you can physically remove all the dead debris. There's so many pieces of equipment that will work for this. If you got a lot of grass, you could use a sod cutter, which I don't necessarily recommend that. Like, there's big old fancy sod cutter machines, but they are so expensive. If you have access to one, by all means, that's really easy. But it's kind of, kind of challenging because it's so expensive to get those sod cutter machines, like the really big ones. But I've done roto tilling before just go rent a rototiller for the day and just till everything up and get it from the roots so that there's everything's loose debris. And then I just take rakes, rake out all the loose debris and then put it on tarps. Like you have these big blue tarps and then haul it off to the dump. So that's, that's, that's one way to do it. And then if you do have a, a mini, mini skid loader or like a regular size skid loader, there's attachments that you can put on there that would, you know, you can just scrape the yard and get, get all the debris with the, with a skid steer with the right attachment. So however you choose to do it, there's, there's multiple heavy equipment routes that you can go where you don't have to spray any glyphosate and you can loosen up all that debris and, and then, you know, rake it out and then haul it off. Or you can spray glyphosate every way everywhere and make sure 100% of the stuff's killed off and then scrape all that out and haul it away. But at the end of the day, you got, you got to get rid of whatever's already existing there. So once you get that step done and again there's, there's many, many different ways to, to, to eradicate the old area. You. But you got to get it down to the bare minimum of the, just the good foundation. And then this is kind of where we're starting now. So however you got to this point. And again, there's so many different ways to get to this point. But now you got an area, we'll just call it a five pallet saw job. You got the area ready to go. You got all the rocks out of there, you got all the, the previous weeds and grass and debris and, and trash and everything's gone. So now all you got is soil. What I recommend doing is, is bringing in nutrient rich topsoil or compost. And I'll take that rototiller until everything up so that I'm, I'm getting the existing dirt, you know, going and then mix in the fresh soil. Now there's different suppliers that have different stuff. The place where I get my stuff, they literally just call it the good stuff. Like if you go there, like, hey, can I get some of the good stuff? It's this like mix of compost and topsoil and they mix in. It's just, it's just Nutrient rich topsoil. It's not just your regular screen. Topsoils really is really, really, really good stuff. That's going to help the turf, you know, start growing immediately. So what you want to do is you want to, you want to have a good mix of soil by tilling up what the existing dirt is and then bringing in some extra form of nutrient rich topsoil. And then from there you want to grade the soil perfectly. So there's. I actually bought. It wasn't even that expensive. A little concrete rake over at Home Depot. It's like a blue, the long handles blue, and then the little part on the end, you know, like a silverish gray. And it's actually used to grade driveways. But I found that like that gives me a perfect grade. But you want to ensure that the grade slopes away from the house, away from the foundation. So when it rains, the rain's not going towards the basement of the house, but it, you know, you start high by the house and then you want to make the grade go lower as you get out to the street or the sewer drainage areas so that when it rains, the water goes away from the house into if there's drainage stations throughout the yard or if there's not, you know, kind of get it out to the street or whatnot. And you want to make sure that soil is as smooth as possible. Now, I know like skid steers have the newer ones, right? They have these lasers that can grade to perfection. Like you can kind of set it and forget it, but, but not everyone has access to that. So if you're going to manually do it by hand, you can just use rakes, landscaping rakes. And again, I, I don't know the name of this tool I just got at Home Depot. Hashtag not sponsored. It was. Or actually, I might have got Lowe's. Actually, I don't even remember. I just remember. I think it was Lowe's actually. But they, they sell them at both, you know, big box stores. It's just, it's literally called a concrete grade. And it's just a rake that the, the bottom of it is perfectly smooth. Because when you grade a driveway, you, you know, driveway has got to be perfect. So it's got like a straight edge for grading. So I just, you know, I just run that. I just take the topsoil with a regular landscape rake and kind of do my rough draft and then I take the, the concrete grade and run it over again till it's absolutely perfect. So now you've taken away all the Old weeds, grass, existing vegetation, little rocks, debris, all that stuff's gone. You brought in the good stuff, which is a nutrient rich topsoil, and now you've graded it to perfection where it's smooth. Like I talked about earlier with painting, you don't have any bumps. If there's bumps, the bumps are going to still be there when you put sod on top. So you want, you want it to be as smooth as possible, and you can accomplish that doing it by hand with landscaping rakes and a concrete grader rake and time and hard work or I know you know, my friends that have these big skid steers with the technology, the laser technology, literally just kind of set how you want the grade and the machine will do it. It's crazy. But not everyone. I mean, my audience, I'm, I'm remembering my days where money was tight. And it's not like you can just go out and rent this stuff or pay someone to do it, and you got to do it by hand. You, you absolutely can do a profitable sod installation by hand for sure and make good money doing it. Just grade it with rakes and the concrete grater. Now, if you have access to the machine, by all means, efficiency is everything. Use it. But if you don't, do it the old fashioned way. So, all right, that's the prep work, which is super important, really. That's where the job is won or lost. If you cut corners doing the prep work, your, your sod job is going. There's no way to overcome that. You have to have a good foundation of, of, of soil that's smoothly graded in the right direction, you know, away from the house. And that's when you put yourself in the best position when the sod arrives to do what we're going to talk about next, how to actually install the sod, the right way to do it, the protocol. We'll talk about that coming right up. Crest Commercial is the only solution for commercial landscapers to convert to electric with the power of gas, no downtime. With their 8 minute charging system, and industry disrupting warranties that offer 6 years or 3000 full life cycles on the Cyberpack batteries. There is no reason to not make the switch. To find out more about the free demos and how you can start saving up to 2, $2,000 per year per crew, visit crest.com today to find your local dealer. Real quick before we move on. If you're tired of buying equipment blind or running your crew the same way, hoping something changes, get yourself to equip exposition this October in Louisville, test drive the best equipment from every major manufacturer in one place. Come see me at the morning show. Check out equips education sessions built for guys actually running crews. Use my code Paul at registration to save 50% on your pass. The link is in today's show notes. All right, so we talked about the prep work, which is extremely important to a successful sod installation. Now you do want to order the sod in advance. There's a lot of different ways people order sod. I would not buy sod from a big box store. I would not buy sod that's just sitting out basically at the sod farm. And I've been to these sod farms. It's pretty remarkable. They're these gigantic fields that are just this epic, immaculate grass. And then what they do is they have these gigantic enormous sod cutter machines that come through and cut the sod. Well, once the sod is severed from the earth, it's essentially in, it's essentially dying. Because now this living organism that had its roots connected to the soil on the sod farm. The, the, it's been ripped out from the root. And so it is literally on life support. It is fighting for its life. So it gets loaded onto some form of a vehicle and then it gets, you know, driven to the sod supplier. And so ideally, you want to find a good sod supplier in your area, place your order. Let's say you're doing five pallets of Bermuda sod. You want to say, hey, we need five pallets of Bermuda sod on Wednesday morning so that the order is in. So let's say you do your prep work on Monday or Tuesday or even if you did the prep work the day before. I like to have margin there, don't. I wouldn't recommend like, doing the prep work the day before. Like, and then something happens with the delivery. And now you're all, you know, margin's good. So anyway, you've done your prep work, you've placed your order, and you want that, ultimately you want that sod to be delivered to, like, your supplier. Like, they do it overnight at most legitimate places. So it comes in at like 4, 4:30 in the morning, and then you, you, you come rolling in at 7am when they open, and some of them open earlier than that. But that you, they, they load you up and you're off to the races. Or what I honestly think is better is just pay the, the sod supplier to deliver it for you. Because sod is so heavy, depending on what vehicle you have. It's going to do so much wear and tear on your transmission and the vehicle in general. So I would just pay the sod installer or supplier, pardon me. To deliver it to your customer's property. So again, you want to get that relationship established to where you know, the driver knows who you are. And I would always tip him at least 20 tip at least to keep him happy because he'll remember you. And then next time he sees you on the schedule, like, oh, you know, I'll get a 20 tip at least. You know, if you want to give him 40, 50, um, that's a good relationship to have. And then you want to have a good relationship with the people that work there that they know you're reliable and just that. That's a. That's a good, good, good point. But anyway, back to the turf. It's delivered to your customer property. Let's say we're doing a five pallets of Bermuda sod. You want to look where's the longest, straightest line on the property? And most of the time, it's going to be out on the street. Like the, the street is this long line. That's where you want to start your sod. Now, in some cases, if your customer has like, a uniquely long driveway or something like that, or a sidewalk, that might be the longest straight line. But just look where you don't want to start the sod at some curvy garden bed, right? You want to start it out typically right alongside the street or sidewalk is where the longest, straightest area is going to be. Or like I said, you know, I've had some customers that have like a long driveway or whatnot. You could start there. So once you find your longest, straightest edge, you just lay the first row down. And then when you're now into the second row, you need to do what they call the brickwork method. So never, ever, ever line up your seams. You must stagger the joints of the sod so it looks like mason. The way a mason lays bricks, they put it, they. They put it staggered. Go look at a red brick. Anything. The, the. The seams, they're not like, right on top of each other. It's the, like, the seam is in the middle of one of the red bricks, and then that one goes to the middle of the other red brick, and they're staggered. The reason you do that is because this prevents water from basically, like, just being like a river down the seam because it doesn't have any momentum, because the seams aren't aren't straight line, they're staggered. So the water is going to have trouble, you know, collecting itself in those seams. So that's super important. And then you want to butt the edges together as absolutely tightly as you can see, so don't overlap them. You can't have like a piece of sod, like a little bit overlapped, one piece of sod, because that would block the sunlight from hitting the grass. So you have to have them, like, snug up against each other, but not on top of each other. But do not leave gaps. If you're listening, Lamont Hairston, Pookie, he sent me a funny picture of a sod installation where they had these gigantic, big gaps. Gaps. Well, first of all, you've probably seen this, but weeds will go in those, growing those gaps so fast, it's crazy. But also, the problem is if you have gaps, the edges will get dried out. Remember, I said the, the. The. The sod's fighting for its life. So by it being snugged up against other sod, that's kind of protecting those edges. So that's super important. Now, next, you're going to need a machete. They sell at the sod place where I, you know, pick up sod, they sell these special sod knives. So it's ultimately like a glorified machete. But you can, you can pick those up. Any big box store sells a, like a machete type thing, sod knife, machete, and make sure that thing's sharp, because if that thing gets dull, it's gonna. You're gonna find out quickly. It's gonna take more effort. So that thing needs to be razor sharp. Be careful with it. But you're gonna need that to cut off the pieces around sprinkler heads. Whenever you get to a garden bed, flower bed, you're gonna have to kind of, you know, curve the turf. So you just use a machete to. To get the line into place and for all of your curves. And again, like I said, be very, very, very, very, very cautious and careful because that machete would, you know, unfortunately, it will cut whatever it lands on. So be very, very careful with your sharp machete that you're only hitting it on the sod, not your. Your fingers or whatnot. Be very, very, very careful. But that's going to help you do all the. The curvature work. And then once the sod's all filled into the area. So you put. You started with your straightest line, you staggered it like bricks. Your joints are very, very tight. You cut it Cut around all the garden beds so that you can use like white spray paint or whatever and just like put the sod down and then draw a white line over the sod where the garden bed goes. And then cut, cut over the white line and then some of the pieces that will be like in the garden bed, you just throw those away and then you have a perfect edge. So once you do it once, it's pretty simple. But you definitely need a. And it doesn't have to be white spray paint. It could be yellow or you know they spray, they have yard spray paint cans at the big box stores. But you're definitely going to want one of those because you're going to need to, you need to draw your line where the garden bed is like on top of the side so that you know where to cut. So then anyway once you do all of that, you need to roll it. You can rent a sod roller at the big box store. They, they sell them for, you know, I would honestly buy one but if can't afford it right out gate and you got to rent one for the day, rent one. You fill it up with water and then you just pull it over the lawn. This thing's so heavy when it's full of water. Like I mean you're going to need muscle man or muscle woman or someone very, very strong to pull that thing and roll the lawn with it because that's going to push the air out of the pockets and it ensures the absolute critical part of connecting the, the, the, the root that got ripped out at the farm. Right. We talked about how that, that root got severed at the sod farm. Well, it's just dangling there for dear life. When you roll the sod with the sod roller, it pushes down on the sod and it pushes the, the root deeper into that lush soil. Hopefully you took my advice and you, you got the nutrient rich soil graded out there. Well, when you push that, will you pull actually the, the roller over the grass. It pushes down that root into that soil making it connect faster. So the rolling, it's so important to ensure that soil to root contact that they're already kind of, kind of contacted. But when you push, you know you, you get that that root pushed down in the soil even more. That's going to help make it contact better. Which now the root and can start to establish into the new soil and get connected back to the earth and survive. If you don't do this, you're in big trouble. Now the most important thing after all of this is you need to make sure you do immediate watering. I mean, that sod needs to be absolutely soaked within 30 minutes of installation. As soon as you lay that last piece of sod, you are watering that thing like crazy. You don't want to flood it, but you, you want it, you want it to be nice and moist. I like to pick up a piece of sod and put my finger underneath on the, the bottom of the sod, and it should be nice and moist. It shouldn't be like a lake or an ocean flooded, but it should be, it should definitely be moist. So the liability waiver, 100% time. You need to have it in writing in your contract that if the customer lets the saw dry out and die, you're not replacing it for free. That's where I made my mistake. I have to go here in two minutes. I got a hard stop, so I don't have time to tell the story. Some of y' all heard me tell the story before, but the, the most abbreviated version is I did a 10 pallet side job. The customer didn't water it. And then he. We got in a big dispute. And long story short, he wanted me to come back, rip out the 10 pallets of sod, reinstall it with fresh new sod, and I did that. He didn't water it again. We were in a drought. And then he same thing came, got the 10 pallets two times now and put 10 more pallets down. I lost so much money on that job, it's. It's just sickening. Sickening. How much money? It was a gigantic job. And, and I literally, basically put the sod down three times the original time. He didn't water it. So we came back and replaced the whole thing. You know, replaced the, Replace the sod. I actually, I don't think it was the whole thing. I think there were some areas that did take, but we, we basically replaced it. You know, the majority of it. Then he didn't water that, and then we came and did it again. So with that being said, make sure you put it in writing that you are not liable if they don't water. And make sure you get a ton of pictures once all the grass goes in of every single roll of sod or piece of sod. If you get the squares that it's nice, lush, green, and that way you have proof. Hey, when we installed it, everything was green and healthy and alive. You didn't water it, bubba. That's on you, not on me. And make sure you are very clear about this up front. I mean you could tell it to them, tell it to them again, tell it to them again. Give them the watering schedule. You know, check with your your geographic area of what the proper way to water sod in is in the month that you install it and let them know. But I gotta run guys. Thanks so much for listening. I hope this has been valuable to you and if it has been, Please leave us a five Star Rating and Review in Apple Podcast I pour my heart and soul into this podcast and when somebody leaves a rating and review saying that you've like listened and it's helped you, that means the world to me. I read 100% of those. So if you found value from today's show or any other episode in Apple in Spotify they have an area where you can review our podcast. Please leave us a five stars and drop us a note of how I've added value to your life and your business. I would really appreciate that. Thank you for listening and hope to catch you on next episode. Peace.
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Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.
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