Okay, I'm going to make this brief. In the not too distant future most homes will have synthetic grass. Mark my words, people - we are at the forefront of a polypropylene revolution!
Blah, blah, blah the majority of the water used by your home is for your landscaping. Blah, blah, blah real grass requires you to have a real person cut it and that person might be you or if you live in Southern California probably not you. Blah, blah, blah real grass requires fertilizer and various chemicals plus the mower is likely a gas mower that's emitting fumes that will kill us all by next week. Blah, blah, blah real grass attracts real bugs and needs real TLC. Blah, blah, blah real grass can be a real headache for you and the environment.
This is the kind of information you will get when you go to the many sites of companies selling "the only synthetic grass you should consider." Turns out, a lot of the crap is made in Georgia by carpeting manufacturers or by a few companies in China. If you're anything like me you're going to avoid the Chinese product cause I love me some beef and broccoli but due to recent events I'm kinda scared of lead paint.
If you haven't learned anything from me (and once again why would you?) then you know I'm a big game bargain hunter. I do endless research and then love for vendors to come to my house and give me estimates cause:
- It's fun to wait all day for people who don't show up.
- I love it when people try to rip me off.
- It's a fun way to get people to pay attention to me.
- They all talk shit about their competition.
I wasn't kidding earlier, this crap is going to be everywhere but right now there are only a few companies with expert installers and a few more fly-by-night operations who don't know what they are doing. You can spot the fly-by-nighters as they are usually unable or unwilling to answer any of your questions.
So first I had a landscaping guy come over. I got him through Service Magic or as I like to call it Service Charge Magic cause every contractor they've sent to me is much higher than anyone else. I'm wondering if Service Magic charges them a vig and they want to pass along their lack of savings to us. A guy named "Roman" came by and quoted me "Around $8.00 a square foot." In a city where real estate is described as Beverly Hills ADJACENT, which could mean up to 20 miles away from Beverly Hills, I'm not too comfortable with $8.00 adjacent as a quote. I sent Roman homan. Then I had a guy come by who was Mr. Chatterbox and had lots of samples and told me how he tapes seams and puts in sand and rubber for ballast and how you want a polypropylene product and not nylon and how the thatch is recyclable and blah, blah, blah. I totally loved this guy. He know so much it bored me and that's saying something. Then I called another company which has a manufacturer here in LA. I didn't get one estimator I got two. The two women pulled up in front of my house (both in separate, brand new BMWs which I took as a very bad sign) and throughout their estimate they tag teamed me like fiends.
'You can't buy any product but ours.' 'We see bad installations of other stuff all the time.' 'People buy the other stuff and then tear it out and buy ours anyway.' 'The stuff from China will kill your entire family.' 'If you don't buy our stuff your house will disintegrate.' 'Buy our product and not any other or life as we know it will end.' You know the drill. They tried to whip me into a frenzy and close me on the spot but all I could do was fantasize about seeing them unconscious at the bottom of the empty pool as the dirt poured in. No one would know my little secret until it's too late! Bwah ha ha ha! Okay they were yapping for a while and I started to drift off.
Unfortunately I did like their product and like I said it's manufactured here in sooty Southern California which is a plus. But...they had no deals on the junk. It was $8.99 a square foot installed including tax. I'm apparently eligible for a rebate from the city which is .30 a foot but that's the case with whatever product I install.
In the end their bid was $4,500 adjacent and that was not the neighborhood I wanted to be in. Plus, the fact that the salespeople were driving tricked out beemers made me think that they're making an awful lot of green on the fake green. What to do?
Obviously I liked one product and one installer so I decided to match the two. My master plan is to buy the last product for those keeping score) but not use their installers. If I buy the grass alone it's $3.49 a square foot. Mr. Chatterbox quoted me $3.00 a square foot to install the stuff so I can get the $8.99 per sq. ft. quote reduced to $6.49 per sq. ft. By doing my own mix and matching, instead of $4495.00 I'm looking at $3245.00 which gives me a whopping savings of $1250.00. Since I'm dealing with 500 sq. ft. shaving $2.49 off per sq. ft. is pretty huge.
Now it's time to get all of the moving parts moving at the same time...
