Why your patio quotes are one line long

It isn't malice

A lump sum protects the trader. Until the turf comes up, nobody knows whether there's soft ground, an old concrete base or a drain run underneath — so a single figure with some fat in it is safer than a list of promises they might not be able to keep. It also saves an evening's typing.

And there's a quieter reason: most customers don't have a spec, so a line-by-line quote wouldn't help them anyway. Only about a third of UK homeowners get an itemised written quote at all. If you can't tell a full mortar bed from spot bedding, the trader has no incentive to write down which one you're getting.

The fix isn't a cleverer way of reading a one-line quote. It's changing what gets quoted.

The 14 things a proper spec pins down

These are the lines a landscaper's own estimating sheet carries — and the ones the Quote-Checker looks for on yours:

- Sub-base and its depth (100 mm of compacted MOT Type 1 is the floor) - Waste taken away — skip, grab or muck-away - Full mortar bed under every slab, not spot bedding - Primer on the back of porcelain - The exact paving named — brand, thickness, pack size - Falls and the damp course - How it's jointed, and with what - Drainage work — channels and gullies - Edge restraint on open edges - Dig-out depth, and what happens if they find concrete - Stripping out what's there now - Skip permit if it goes on the road - A written guarantee, in years - Dated and held for 30 days

A quote that names ten of these is a quote you can compare. A quote that names none is a number.

Bring the sheet

The Job Sheet is the schedule of works you hand over before anyone prices anything: your patio's size, stone and ground, every line above with a quantity and the spec text a landscaper would write themselves, and the days on site a two-person crew should need. Built for your region by the same engine as the calculator above.

Send the same sheet to every trader and every quote comes back on the same footing. Where a quote is silent on a line, that silence is the finding. It's free to build, print and send.

Then check them

When the quotes arrive, the Quote-Checker reads each one against your sheet — what's in it, what isn't, and what it'll probably cost once the missing lines are added — and writes the questions to ask, in the order the money hangs on them.