Is the Cheapest Patio Quote in Savannah Actually a Good Deal, Or Is It BS?

You have two or three patio quotes sitting in front of you, and the difference between a couple of them is thousands of dollars. Of course the lowest quote gets your attention, you can’t stop thinking about it, because part of you wonders if it’s one of those things that’s too good to be true.

My name is Randy Thompson, and I am the founder of All-Out Hardscapes LLC here in Savannah. We build patios, walkways, and outdoor living spaces all over the Coastal Lowcountry, from Wilmington Island to Savannah Quarters. I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years, and have completed more than 150 projects. I’m also a certified Techo-Pro installer, which means I’ve spent a ton of time learning exactly what makes one of these patios last and why a lot of them fail.

Here’s what I tell everybody who asks me about a low bid. We’re not the cheapest crew. I would say we are actually one of the most expensive patio companies in the Lowcountry. That’s not something I take pride in, it’s just how it works out. But there’s a reason the cheap quote is cheap, and once you see what it is, you will know what you’re looking at when you see any other quote. The low number is almost never a good deal. It’s about what’s missing under the pavers.

So Is the Cheapest Quote Actually a Good Deal?

Most of the time, no. That’s because the cheap quote is not for the same patio. When one installer comes in thousands of dollars under another for the same square footage, that’s not because they’re being nice, and it’s not a smarter way of doing business. It’s a shorter list of work and materials. The two places that almost always get cut are the parts you will never see once the patio is finished. The base under the pavers and the sand between them. Those are also the two things that decide whether your patio is still flat and tight in five years or sinking and coming apart.

What Is the Cheaper Installer Leaving Out?

Two layers do the heavy lifting on a paver patio, and both are easy to shrink on a quote because you can’t inspect them once the job is done.

The first is the base. A proper base is a thick layer of compacted, open-graded gravel under the pavers. Open-graded just means the stone is all one size with no fine dust mixed in, so water drains straight through it instead of gathering and pooling against the pavers and causing damage. That layer actually does two things. It carries the weight of the patio and everything you put on it, and it gives heavy rain somewhere to go. In Savannah, where the ground stays wet and the downpours are significant, you absolutely must have good drainage. Cut the base out or make it too thin, and the patio has no real foundation and water can’t drain out from underneath.

The second main thing is the joint sand. The sand swept into the gaps between pavers is what locks them together into one solid surface. To do the job right, we use polymeric sand, which is a jointing sand mixed with a binder that hardens once it is wetted and sets up almost like grout. To save money a lot of installers will skip it and sweep in plain mason sand, which is loose sand with nothing to hold it in place.

The polymeric sand is more important than it sounds. It bonds the joints so the whole field of pavers is like a single locked surface, and water just slides off the top instead of digging into the seams. Plain mason sand has no binder, so the first heavy rain that runs down into the joints will start washing the sand out. As soon as the sand is gone, the pavers lose their lock. They wiggle, then they shift, then the edges go uneven and weeds move into the open gaps. We’ve had to pull up plenty of patios where the only thing wrong was that they used cheap sand.

The Math Behind a Bigger Patio for Less

When we look at a lowball quote, we can usually tell you where the money came from, because we know how much it would save on our own jobs. If we wanted to, we could shave about $5,000 off most of our quotes just by dropping the gravel base and using cheaper fill. We could knock out another $1,200 or so by not using the polymeric sand and just using mason sand instead. That’s not a ballpark number. That’s most of the spread you are staring at between the cheap quote and the good one.

So when a cheaper installer hands you a bigger patio for the same money, this is usually how it works. They’re not finding some clever way to do the job that nobody else knows. They’re taking the $6,200 of work that goes underneath and out of sight and spending it on making the patio bigger, but it’s still going to fail. You get more patio on day one, but then the rainy season gets here, and the base doesn’t drain, the sand washes out, and the bigger patio becomes nothing but a bigger repair bill.

When Does a Lower Quote Make Sense?

We’re not saying that the most expensive quote always wins, and we’re not telling you every cheaper installer is cutting corners. There are times when a lower number can be legitimate. Maybe the scope is smaller, the design is simpler, or the contractor runs a smaller business with less overhead costs. Plenty of good installers come in under us on price. The honest test is not which quote is highest. It’s whether the quotes are for the same patio.

If two installers both quote a full open-graded base at the same depth, both use polymeric sand, and both use the same pavers, then the cheaper one may genuinely be the better deal and you should take it. The only quote to worry about is the one that gets cheap by taking out what needs to go under the pavers to make the patio last. That’s not a discount. It’s just a different, shorter project bragging about the same square footage.

So here’s how to compare quotes without an engineering degree. Ask each installer two questions, and make sure you get the answers in writing. What base are you putting down, and how deep is it? And are the joints getting polymeric sand or plain sand? An installer doing it right will be more than happy to share his process and materials with you, because that’s where the real work and the real costs are. If they get vague when you ask what’s under the pavers, you just found where the savings is. Our whole goal for every job is that we never have to come back to your house. If we do it right, we don’t ever have to go back, and a patio built to never call us back costs a little more up front and a lot less for the rest of the time you own it.