landscaping stone shortage..

[Tom Tallman]

Boy, this covid thing is so deeply affecting everything. I took down a rotted rail road tie wall to rebuild it to a stone retaining wall and all the block/stone suppliers in the area are telling them they can't get much product at all and where i can get blocks they don't have corners or tops.

I don't know how you folks in the home construction/landscaping business are staying afloat.

[bcreek]

Charging double or triple for what we can get.

[A Wood]

It is an absolute sh*t show right now. I've pushed jobs off moved jobs up, had to split up jobs. Some jobs with special order materials I have ordered a while ago and hopefully all the pieces will be in for 2022. Just had 2 tractor trailers worth of block dropped in my yard yesterday, that is for 2 projects next year. Most people understand but it just sucks.

[bassboat1]

A friend up here has about 10 acres of palleted Techo, Belgard and Allen. Their yard has been stuffed all summer.

[Bassin08]

There is a shortage of everything, that is why inflation is rising so fast.

[Bassman Ia.]

Every area is different. I have a couple walls at today’s prices would be $20K. I want to extend the end of one of the walls out past my shed, only 2 stones high. FB Marketplace —- I found the matching stones 25 for $70. Another ad had 200 same type ( 80-100 lb stones with the tails) FREE, 45 miles away. I would look around

[A Wood]

A friend up here has about 10 acres of palleted Techo, Belgard and Allen. Their yard has been stuffed all summer.

This is the irony of the matter. One of my suppliers yard is stuffed full as well. But 80% of it is already sold or on hold but guys cant get to jobs fast enough or are waiting on other pieces for the job. The job I'm on now I was supposed to start june 1st. Granite steps were special order size, usually 4-6 weeks, took them 14 weeks to get cut. So because of this I had 14 pallets of wall block sitting at the distributor for 3 extra months.

[DrewFlu33]

Be prepared for it to effloresce really badly when you do get hold of it. We had a paver patio done last summer, right when the big run on patio stone started. It had efflorescence so bad, we eventually had to acid wash it to remove it, and it was a bitch to get off at that. Before cleaning, it constantly looked like it was in some stage of drying after having been wet, despite being completely dry, and it hadn't improved even a little bit after a year of being down.

Having worked on cleaning that stuff in the past (my dad ran a pressure washing company and I worked for him for more than a decade), I know that some efflorescence is normal. But it usually goes away on its own in relatively short order. When you have stuff that won't go away, that's a sure sign that the block, brick, paver, whatever was allowed to get rained on before it was adequately cured, or that someone who doesn't know what they're doing took a pressure washer to it and hit it directly with high pressure water for an extended period of time. All these companies churning these blocks out as fast as they can, you better believe they're all getting sat right outside on pallets to be rained on without being given the time they need to cure.

[Mike Parish]

Be prepared for it to effloresce really badly when you do get hold of it. We had a paver patio done last summer, right when the big run on patio stone started. It had efflorescence so bad, we eventually had to acid wash it to remove it, and it was a bitch to get off at that. Before cleaning, it constantly looked like it was in some stage of drying after having been wet, despite being completely dry, and it hadn't improved even a little bit after a year of being down.

Having worked on cleaning that stuff in the past (my dad ran a pressure washing company and I worked for him for more than a decade), I know that some efflorescence is normal. But it usually goes away on its own in relatively short order. When you have stuff that won't go away, that's a sure sign that the block, brick, paver, whatever was allowed to get rained on before it was adequately cured, or that someone who doesn't know what they're doing took a pressure washer to it and hit it directly with high pressure water for an extended period of time. All these companies churning these blocks out as fast as they can, you better believe they're all getting sat right outside on pallets to be rained on without being given the time they need to cure.

I've been in the block manufacturing game for twenty plus years. The only way to stop efflorescence is with the proper chemicals used during production. No shortage here, we keep around 75k sq. ft. In stock at all times. Yes we are having a banner year!!!