Many companies will ask for some type of deposit amount, but the amount should be fairly small. If the contractor needs a large amount of money up front, that should be a warning flag. It might mean that the contractor/company has little to no available credit at vendors to purchase materials. If the contractor is good and pays their bills, they should have no problem purchasing their materials either in full with operating money, or on credit from the vendors. And you would like to think that a contractor or company should be able to make their payroll without needing your large deposit up front. Again, these may be signs that the person you are dealing with is not financially sound and may be warning flags. This isn't always the case, but it is something to watch out for.

On the other side, a small company or contractor always carries some worry that the homeowner may not pay up. So, imagine the contractor purchases $5,000 in materials and does work for one week and the homeowner decides to not pay, the contractor is the one that loses. Yes, there is a legal process to lien the house and try and collect, but the time and costs involved can exceed the amount owed, so sometimes it is truly lost. It only takes a single bad experience to leave the bad experience in a contractor's mind.

The best way to go about it would be to have a reasonable deposit amount, with the amount and terms listed in a signed contract. On a larger project, the contract should spell out when draws, or intermediate payments, may be collected. This way, both parties are more protected during the process. In our one bad case, we left way too much remaining to the end of the job, and that client happened to be the one to

If you buy the Ready to Use Round-Up, the package is ready to spray, no water added, it is 2% per gallon.

Therefore, the pre-mixed Round-Up is done at a higher concentration than our 73.3% Round-Up QuikPro

Here is an example, if you wanted to mark off an exact circle in the ground, you can either place a stake in the center and tie a string at the desired radius, then mark the circle by walking around with the fixed length string. A long piece of PVC pipe can be looped into a circle, and it will be in a near perfect circle that can be laid on the ground. and marked. A garden hose provides something to follow, but it does not provide the near perfect curve.

We mainly use PVC pipe to mark curves in our hardscape projects. It allows us to mark a nearly perfect curve and then saw cut the patio and walkway curves.

First, what type of water feature do you have? Is it a pond, a pond and waterfall, or fountain, and what type of liner/basin does it have?

Next, is it losing water only when running, or if you were to turn off the pump, will the water loss stop? If it only loses water when running, it narrows down where to look for the leak.

Based on these details, I can steer you in the right direction on finding the leak, and possibly fixing it yourself. Each type of liner/basin has its own type of repair, and most are not difficult or expensive to repair if they are minor and you can locate it. Sometimes, the leak on a pond and stream is where someone stepped on a rock near the edge, and it is diverting water out of liner while running. These repairs are just finding the culprit rock/debris and placing it back in place, and raising the liner so that the water is contained in the liner.

Also, you don't have to have an outside company come in with expensive equipment to find a leak, I can steer you in the right direction, and it will take some time and a little trial and error, but you should be able to find it.

I will wait to hear back from you with some more details in order to steer you in the right direction.