Help Me Bid

I have several conveinence store lots to give estimates on. They would like me to clean from the store front to to ther side of the gas pump canopy. How much should I charge to clean around pumps, and parking stalls (heavy oil and grease)using flat surface cleaner, hot water, and degreaser. and rest of traffic area recieving just washing with three foot water broom. Maybe a price per square foot. Oh yeah and there are several low baller, home depot units in the area!?!@##@$#%%%@ Thanks for the help!!!

ron p

before anyone can help you, what is the EPA going to say about gas and oil going down a storm drain? if you do not have a reclaim system you should not be doing gas stations.. Then when you buy that reclaim system the owner will not want to pay you what your worth.. He will keep finding lowballers without a clue to do his dirty work. Why is it not a fed. law that gas stations have there own water reclaim systems?
Once you ask the EPA about waste water and they tell you the rules, you are now responsable, you wont get a warning. You get the fine if you dont follow the laws.
Your state may be diffrent but im betting it's not.

Heck I have reclaim and I avoid gas stations, most don't want to pay what the job is worth so I let others have them.

Not saying for the right price I would not do them, sure I would but the right price to me is my price, not theirs.


Ok go ahead and tell me I am missing out here, way I see it is there is enough gas stations to keep my competitors busy while I go do the jobs that pay better.

Besides gas stations are slow pay so be sure if you do them get your money fast, like here is the bill Sir now please pay me cash.

Jon

Hey Bruce,

With these fly by night low ballers out there, it's really hard to give you a real acurate price standard.
I have heard of certain companies that pay as much as $250 per month on these parking lots, but unless it is a very big chain, I doubt you would be able to get that around here.
The last one I bid here in our area was about $150 a month for a fairly large store, but the manager said that the combination of having their lawn care done every month and the hope of power washing each month, she couldn't afford that much. If I'm remembering correctly it was about 8 bays plus about 10 parking spaces.
I did a 7-11 once that was a one shot cleaning. It hadn't been done in about a year and looked really bad, so I charged about $250.
After your first cleaning, you could probably lower the cost quiet a bit.
If your looking for a cost per Square feet, I wouldn't charge over
7 or 8 cents per Sq. Ft.
Don't worry about the recovery. We haven't been hit with that ridiculous nonsense yet.

Just my opinion.

I hope this helps.
Save some for me.


Richard R.

Price??

I have learned that the best way for me at least is to bid by teh hour. I don't know how long you have done this but if you have done this a while you should know how long it will take you. I say you should make at least $65 an hour. I used to do the sq. footing but it takes to long and some time the price gets to high to fast. with hourly you know how long it should take and soyou still make money in the end. Thats what I do. I don't do much flat work any more I mostly do hoods I bid them the same way by teh hour. Works for me

Domonic A,

I know a lot of guys do the hour pricing, but sometimes that can cause an even bigger problem with someone who is cleaning something for the first time.
Something that may take you an hour to do, may take me two hours to do. What happens then.
Sq Ft never changes and you can be fair to everybody until your more familiar with the work.
I know few agree with me on this one, but I believe that speed causes carelessness and in some cases causes shottie workmanship when first starting out on a new cleaning project.
Then again, like you said, if you've done this type of work a lot, you should know how long it would take you by the hour.

The one reason I usually tell others about the sq ft pricing is that if they are asking about pricing, then they perobably don't do this type of work often enough to know how long it will take them.

Once they learn, then they can use the hourly pricing.

Take Care
Richard R

Price

You are right for a first timer the best way is to measure it outand bid by sq. footing. But once you learn what you can do I say get rid of it. As for the first time cleaning your right sometimes you bid for a job you think is going to take an hour and then you're there for two maybe three hours. Yes I have do that and had to bite the bullet. Live and learn I guess. If it is the inital cleaning I usally add and extra $50-$100 on top of regular price to make sure and cover my butt in case I spend more time there or more chemical then I thought. But with time you get to a point you can look at something for a minute and just know the price.

Dominic A.,

Your very right.

For Bruce's sake, would you be able to say roughly what your average charge was for a medium size convenient store, that is, back when you did them?
I notice where the other posts don't give much to go on.
You know, say 6 bay store with about 8 parking spaces.
If you can't, I understand.

Thanks Dominic

Richard R

ron p

Richard "redicouls non-sense" your quote on reclaim.
We dont see eye to eye on this one.
Not wanting the planet screwed-up for the sake of a few $$$?
Gas stations/parking lots should have there own way to filter water.
Any washing that can poss. have reclaim, should. Then make it a jailable offence not to use it. That would raise prices,get rid of non-professionals,make a better world.
GOVERN YOURSELF BEFORE THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO DO IT FOR YOU.
I know, you cant afford it untill everyone has to do it.
Texas, you guys still pump oil down there right? No wonder no one around there want's to open a HUGE can of worms. You got big $$$$$ oil co. that spend lots of money to see that your reclaim is not an issue. That would cost them a lot of money.

Ron,

I am as big an outdoorsman as anyone on these boards, but I could not agree more with Richard. It IS ridiculous nonsense! When a Home Depot store can build a parking lot for 500 cars and every time it rains all the runoff goes into the storm drain and yet we are supposed to reclaim for washing trucks, it IS ridiculous. If you want to improve the quality of the storm water, and ultimately lakes, rivers and streams, you have to go after the large sources of the pollution. Let's see.........highways are made out of asphalt, a petroleum product and all the vehicles are dripping oil so every time it rains.........you guessed it. If the PWNA wasn't in bed with reclaim equipment manufacturers we might have a voice with the EPA on this, but that will never happen. Money talks.

Hopefully Dan or Mike can move our posts to a stand alone thread, because this is indeed a very good topic for discussion.

Ron, it's not about opening up a can of worms because of the oil companies we have. Warren hit it on the head.
The picture is much bigger than most people realize, but it all falls back to the simple words of Warren's reply.

I feel sorry for anyone who actually believes the recovery nonsense or has fallen victim to believing it.

It's like watching two children playing with toys. Ever seen one child that's not interested in a toy until the other child picks it up and because of the screaming the parent gives the toy to the screaming child who wasn't interested in the toy in the first place? Eventually the toy is put down and neither child plays with it.
That's exactly what's going to happen here.
Because of the companies who wants a piece of our action, we wind up giving over to their whinning and the costs shut down our business or our customers are charged so much that eventually they will revert back to the old fashion way.
The amount of water coming out of our 5 gallon a minute systems is not even a fraction of the water run off caused by most rains.
I understand recovery in some cases where there is a large accidental or crimminal chemical spill, but washing nature off of someones driveway or parking lot does not justify the cost, time and extra hassle we and the customers have to endure to satisfy these recovery system companies.

There are a lot more remedies to cure this problem without making the powerwash guys have to pay for it.
I can assure you, if you raise the prices to clean my convenient
stores anymore than you do already, I'll just start having my employees get out the water hose, brush and soap bucket and you wouldn't get any of my business.

Is that what we want?

We really need to think of the ending results before we create a monster to large to capture.

Richard R.

Big Boy
I'm not real sure what kind of problems you have there with household soaps but the ones we use here are virtually harmless to our water ways.
I to have been a river rat almost all my life and I've never seen any household detergents that would harm our wild life.
As a matter of fact, if you want to grow one of the nicest lawns or gardens, let your wash water spill out on the ground around them and you'll have green everything when everything else is dried and burned up.
As for the sodium hypochlorite that is in bleach and things, thats not very dangerous either unless you over do it. Sodium Hypochlorite is in the drinking water in almost every city in the country. Lots of it too. As for the caustic chemicals that powerwashers use, that too is in nearly every household degreasers there is on the market, just in a smaller form.

What's mind boggling to me is that we talk about the process of emulsifying or emulsion that occurs when the degreasers hit the grease. I have been told by several of the power washers here that it basically turns into soap. Well if that's true, that brings up and entirely different theory. If you use 2 or three gallons of degreasers or household detergents and about 500 gallons of water to rinse with, what part of the deluted chemical do you have left? Basically nothing. Then when a rain comes and finally pushes it to our rivers and streams, the reaction becomes a purification process.
I find it hard to believe that the small amount of chemicals that power washers use are dangerous by the time they get to our water ways.
I bet you if the truth was known, there is more pollution of our water ways caused by the pop bellied, beer drinking, whiskey guzzling, tournamant throwing fisherman out there than there is the power washers. Sorry about the discription, but I've been there and seen that. I know first hand what they can do to a lake and rivers. It may not apply to some, but I'd be willing to believe
it does for about 65% of them and that is enough to cause a lot more damage than we do.

Richard R.

you say there are many home depot units? there are many home depot units everywhere.


you would need to educate the customer that your service will be different than theres.

as far as pricing .25 per sq. ft. is pretty standard..


if the customer want to have services on a regular basis then you need to charge accordingly..


15 day service for those areas will cost $150.00
30 day service $225.00
one time charge could be from 450.00 to 700.00

Just my two cent worth

I new to this BBS, so i dont want to start off on the wrong foot..

Parking Lots are exempt from epa regulations... you can find this on there site i dont have time to surf unless someone wants to pay me.


Unless your local goverment has a regulation you can clean them.

if you use chemicals on this then you then may be requried to clean the water. if you put a contatiment down then you will need to pick it back up.


when washing fleets the only thing that needs to be reclaimed is soilid materials not liquid...


sodium hydroxide is caustic... it is deadly on asphalt....


I might not get welcomed after this post.. you guys are way off base on this one..

ROUND #3 COMING UP! GOT TIME TO RUN TO THE FRIG !

at some later date, I can split this post.......if someone reminds me. too busy to do it now.

Richard,
I agree with you about what your saying concerning recovery/reclaiming during cleaning as far as residential and most commercial is concerned.

Of course I'm not a scientist so I can't say by no means that I'm an expert or even that knowledgable about reclaiming the cleaning water.

Kendra would be an excellent person along with Jon to respond to this because they have reclaiming systems.

In cities I can see the reason somewhat why they want the cleaning water recovered. But I feel like there over reacting a bit here. Consider this, what about all the pollution that the automobiles put in the air and the water from fallout coming from all those mufflers. Yet people can drive there merry way without any worry about polluting the air around them. Of course everybody suffers from long term effects from all this pollution.

SO why all the huff about us reclaiming our cleaning water when it is pretty much just that...water. And God forbid where using Hot water. THere's a heavy pollutant..give me a break.

This recovery thing is over rated in most cases and it hurts our business because most commercial stores around my neck of the woods would not be willing to pay enough for me to be profitable if I was to use a water reclaiming set-up.

This is why I don't understand the logic here. Its like someone from the EPA got a hard on for us Powerwashers so there way to get us is by putting in these restrictions where you must reclaim your water....yet like I said earlier AUTO"S can pollute the hell out of this planet so where is the logic here.

I don't get it.