Artisans in particular charge quite high prices, of course France has relatively high rates of social charges and taxes and mandatory insurance doesn’t come cheap - I get that.
But sometimes it gets a bit silly.
One of the things I really need to do is sort out a gardener. I need someone who can turn up when I’m not there and mow the grass with his own equipment and, preferably, dispose of the cuttings so an “odd job” guy is probably not going to fit the bill.
During our last visit a chap was doing work for one of the (English) neighbours across the street - he came over to explain that he had been retained by our next door neighbour to cut the hedge along our shared boundary - did I want him to cut our side.
I don’t think I did a very good job of explaining that I’d cut our side in June but did manage to ask if he could send us a devis to cut the lawn. He wanted to know how long it takes me (if I understood correctly, about which I’m not 100%). This is a difficult question because it takes anything from a few hours to a couple of days depending on what state it is in but I settled on 4 hours which is probably about right when it is “not too bad”. I confess I wasn’t that impressed as I rather expected him to tell me how long he thought it would take - being a professional and all that.
His devis (which is for five hours work, plus taking away the cuttings) comes to 197€
I don’t earn that much for half a day and I need multiple degrees and post graduate certifications to do my job.
To get it in context - I can buy a ferry ticket (if I use one of the Brittany Ferries offers), drive down to the house and back, stay 3-4 days, cut the lawn and generally chill and it will only cost me about 50% more than that.
There’s no wonder prices in the Brico’s are as they are.
One of the regular posters on here is a gardener and I’m sure he will explain why it is necessary to charge that much.
When I questioned a gardener about the rates charged they could not understand my argument that if they charged more than clients were prepared to pay they’d have no clients. Simple supply and demand.
Talking to the neighbours it seems that there are a couple of gardeners that charge ~ 30€ per hour (he is obviously one as his rate is 34€/hr) and a couple about the 16-18€ per hour region.
I clearly need to get in touch with the latter.
Maybe he thinks all Brits are loaded, I guess he gets enough work to keep himself happy. I’m also guessing that the high rates are because he is not working continuously - perhaps by choice.
But I can’t afford nearly 200€ to cut the grass (which really needs doing every 2-3 weeks in the spring/early summer) so he has priced himself out of this job. I just need to figure out a response which doesn’t totally burn bridges as he obviously does work for my neighbours.
Hopefully a straightforward “désolée mais ça coût trop cher” will do.
We charge 25E an hour to cut only using our own machine, more for the ride-on and still more if we have to take away the cuttings. Can’t afford to charge any less as we’d be out of business - diesel to get to the job and back (plus dechetterie if need be), fuel and wear and tear on the machines, social charges of 30% of every Euro we earn, public liability insurance of 50E a month etc etc. Every year we have a battle to stay below the TVA turnover limit which should we go over would mean a huge per hour price hike and the necessity to employ an accountant to submit a tax return.
There is no incentive to earn more and more here but as long as we can earn enough to survive and have a few luxuries etc then that’s okay with us.
We have 0.288Ha, probably 2400-2500m2 of grass by the time the house footprint and gravel drive are taken into account. So not massive, but there are quite a few fruit trees so it is “fiddly”. We inherited the ride-on from the previous owner, it’s a bit under-sized as the manufacturer recommends it for about 1000m2 of lawn. Not sure whether that compromise was because he was a bit tight or for manoeuvrability .
If it is reasonably dry and not too long it does take a full afternoon, I’m getting a bit faster mind, with practice.
The one time it took 2 days it had got to half a meter or more in height and was wet - we cut it simply because to leave it any longer would have required getting someone in with a scythe which really would have cost us a packet
To be honest I would expect an experienced gardener, with an appropriately sized ride-on to do it in less. I thought we’d agreed 4 hours but he has put 5 on the devis which is also a negative as far as I am concerned.
25€ + maybe 20 to take the cuttings I could manage (the déchetterie is 8km away).
Have you considered a mulching lawnmower meaning you don’t need to worry about taking the clippings away? They work very well but you do need to keep the grass quite short.
We have 2000m2 with quite a number of trees and it takes just under 1 hour with ride I, which includes going around the edge with a push along and some strimming.
We also had the grass grow to 50cm once which was a real pain to cut - also spotted snakes at that time for the only time.
We don’t take them all - typically we do one trailer load per cut and the rest (one third to one half of the volume) goes on the compost heap.
Possibly I should do some cuts with the grass box off which would be quicker and take less out of the soil.
One reason that it can take a long time is simply that we are cutting it too wet - but when we have a week and need to cut the grass at some point pretty much whatever the weather I don’t always have a choice.
This year I managed to get over about every three weeks in the peak growing season - might try the same next year, perhaps I can negotiate the time down with the gardener and get him to do one cut for me.
Before I scrounged the unused trailer that my father had in his garage for 30 years we did just that - there is a shady corner where the compost heap lives.
It built up to such a size that after a week solid transporting it to the tip, and spreading it over every nook of the garden as well as the grass it still looked like this
We are now limited to 10 trips to the dechetterie per year, so we bought a garden shredder, one of these Screwfix Link - it has been excellent and already saved 2 trips to dechetterie, it is very quick to use (about the time it takes to go to dechetterie!) and it creates a mulch for flower beds.
In Paul’s defence, he is in the classic position of a second home owner who has a large grass area. This year has been a bit of a luxury, the grass hasn’t grown yet only a year ago my garden needed mowing every 5-7 days. If l left it about 10 days between cuts my mower coped but the cut grass left was still there when the next cut was due and the mower couldn’t manage. The only solution was to rake the ground, collect the cuttings then try again. I know that the low maintenance way to keep my grass under control is to cut is often, Paul (and many other others) are not in a position to do that. When my home was a holiday home I would not entertain paying @€40 an hour to a gardener and used that money to visit as often as possible. For me it was a 2000km round trip with no ferry crossings. If the grass grew too long to be cut easily with my mowers I got my neighbouring farmer to cut it with their topper.
We also have the house as a holiday home and the grass cutting is a constant source of thinking! Whilst renovating all the thoughts were about Septic tanks - this is all so glamorous!
Well, it was a lot of trips but more a question of getting two and a half years worth in a very short space of time. Even so I doubt I’m single-handedly responsible for any tax rises
In any case I inherited a larger pile than shown above from the previous owner, we added to it over the 1st two years before taming it.
It needs a bit of taming again, I must admit but not as bad as it was.
Don’t think so, might be worth a look (any hints on what to search for in google?).
The snag is that involves handing over cash……
As I said I might try it wit the grass box off for a couple of cuts and see how that goes.
We’re not limited - yet - but do now need a card to access the dechetterie, and they are starting to refuse entry if you forget to bring it (I did this once and managed to talk my way in, there is now a stern notice effectively saying “no chance”).
“This year has been a bit of a luxury, the grass hasn’t grown”
Certainly not the case in my spot in Brittany. The longest I dared leave mine was about ten days. The dry weather slows the grass growth but seems to favour the long stemmed weeds. If those are left they go to seed and…you can guess where that leads. I use a (probably undersized) ride on to cut about 7000 sq metres taking three to four hours depending on how wet it is at the time. Two painful realities. One is the cost of petrol. The second is the pain it inflicts on my damaged spine from the bouncing over dips and bumps caused by years of mole activity.
