The Sod Boys

I hired The Sod Boys to remove and replace my front lawn, hoping that would eliminate sedge that had taken over most of the lawn. Their price was 10% lower than the next lowest bid. Various issues arose beyond their control, causing them to delay my job by a day, and perform the work over 2 days instead of 1. They worked 2pm until 8pm the first day (it was dark by 6:30), and 1pm until 10pm the second day, laying sod in the rain to complete everything. In the end, they did a very good job, and honoured the price quoted (I had anticipated paying extra due to issue #2 below).

Issue 1: The Sod Boys had mechanical problems with their trailer. They rented another to carry out this job, but this disrupted their original schedule.

Issue 2: The lawn was more sedge than grass, which created a thick layer of rhizomes under the grass roots. Sedge cannot be controlled with herbicide anything that kills sedge also kills grass. What they removed was twice as thick, twice as heavy, and twice as tough as a usual removal. Their bobcat and their sod cutter both had trouble ripping through. This likely increased the removal time by 50%, and I suspect required an extra trip to dump.

Issue 3: On the second day, the Queensway was closed and traffic was snarled across the city. A trip to empty the trailer took at least triple the usual time.

My only reservation with the job is that my goal was to eliminate the sedge, which has gradually been taking over my lawn for several years. To be fair, none of the companies I spoke with had any experience with a job like this, nor could I find useful information online. I wanted to assess with The Sod Boys after the removal had been completed, but before spreading new soil and laying sod, whether anything else should be done to reduce the likelihood or severity of reemergence of the sedge (e.g. remove more dirt or hand-rake the dirt to extract more rhizomes). Unfortunately, the afternoon of the second day was hectic, and I got caught in traffic delays on my own errands, so there was no opportunity for an assessment.