LARGE landscape boulders?

[B-squared]

I’m Looking for some advice on getting some large (1/4 – 1/2 ton) landscape boulders placed in my front yard. Ideally I would like to go out to Marenakos <http://www.marenakos.com/&gt; and pick them out, then get someone to bring them out and place them. The cost is quite prohibitive to have Marenakos do it. Any suggestions as to who I might contact to do this? Thx!

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[wakeflood]

I know there’s landscapers and yard maintenance guys who will give you a quote to do it. Most likely they’ll all have to do what Marenakos does which is to rent a backhoe or bucket lifter and what it moves on for a day. The problem is most of those machines get dropped off and picked up from a specific location – your house.

They’d need Marenakos to load the rocks into your guy’s large truck – something I’d expect they’ll do for free? – and then use the rented backhoe at your place to offload them.

Some/most of these guys who do yard work have good sized trucks but this will need to be a very stout vehicle – capable of handling more than just 3 or 4? Or it might take several trips to get all the rocks.

I suspect it’s going to cost you in the neighborhood of $500+ to hire this out when taking into account machine rental and labor. How much does Marenakos charge?

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[jissy]

B: Try Tim Saylor at Eagle Rock Construction – he has a “yard” on West Marginal Way and his own heavy equipment, including a dump truck to haul VERY large rocks & the machine to place them — take a look at his website and you’ll see just some of the sizes (thinking specifically of the Highline Comm. College project which I’ve seen in-person). He did a large project for us which also had a “critical Slope” to it and was a little complicated but had it done quick-quick. Not sure if he works with Marenakos (think he has his own resources for the Kapowsin (sp?) green Rocks which is what we chose and are really happy with) but I’m sure if that’s exactly what you wanted it could happen.

http://www.erocksite.com

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[B-squared]

Thanks for the suggestions! wakeflood – it seems like it was going to be over 1k to get Marenakos to place the stones. which starts to approach costing more that the stones :(

thanks, jissy, i’ll check out Eagle. maybe they have some rocks i would consider – that would save a trip from Issaquah!

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[anonyme]

I work in a similar field, although I do mostly softscapes. The $500 figure sounds very low to me; the Marenakos quote might actually be more realistic. It’s a difficult and potentially dangerous process, and a typical “yard crew” will not have the skill or equipment for the task – nor, perhaps, the insurance.

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[wakeflood]

Yes, I concur with anonyme in that typical yard crews may have little experience with this type of work. I have seen some crews doing this work though – maybe not quite that big of rocks, which is a different ballgame when it comes to using machines and not just manpower.

And I figured the $500 figure was a bottom end, which is why I put the +.

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[DaveB]

A slight thread hijack here, but if anyone is looking for some free landscape rocks (not near as big as mentioned in the OP), we have some we’re looking to get rid of. See my wife’s post here: https://westseattleblog.com/forum/topic/landscaping-rocks-free-get-by-225

End of hijack.

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[dirtyard98106]

Give me a call, Jeff at West Seattle Landscape and Stone Supply. We have boulders here at our Delridge Way location, up to about 400-500# and access to others, and a small boom truck that may be able to place them for you…depending a bit on where you want them in the yard. At any rate we can probably fix you up. 206-763-7625 and leave a message if we’re not in the office. Our website is

http://www.egreenlandscaping.com

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[B-squared]

Thanks Dirtyard – i’ll swing by and talk to you about this.

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