# Production Levels



## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

I'm curious as to what production levels other finishers are accomplishing. I don't wish to talk income or pricing here, simply production levels such as how much footage per foot you are reaching and if you are using hand tools ony or you are using mechanical tools.

Personally, I'm using hand tools and reach about 180 square feet per hour on my finishing time. I have reached as high as 200 feet per hour but can reach 180 on average.

I would be interested to know what other finishers are accomplishing. This would be on a finished job, 3 coats. Doesn't matter what materials you use or how you accomplish it. Just curious as to what production levels you are achieving.


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## Apple24 (Jul 17, 2008)

12- 15000 feet a week with 2 man crew stomp texture maybe another day if smooth lids. these are not easy homes, lots of detail.


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## tapingfool (Mar 11, 2009)

300-500 boards per 6 days if all goes well..3 coats ready to paint!!


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## A+ Texture LLC (Jan 10, 2009)

*Good Question*

Can you guys specify whether this is the norm in your area. Some crews are wicked fast, I just like to know averages to make sure my own guys are at least up to par.


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## [email protected] (Dec 23, 2008)

Pretty close to 10k per week per man. With tools, ready to spray. If close (job to job) maybe more.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

A+ Texture LLC said:


> Can you guys specify whether this is the norm in your area. Some crews are wicked fast, I just like to know averages to make sure my own guys are at least up to par.


The job I'm on currently is going quick for me. Large rooms make it easier, I'm hitting about 218 square feet per hour on this one which comes out to around 10464 square feet per week. I'm 52 years old so I guess I'm still in good shape.

From what I've been told about what other finishers like me are earning in a week, the footage per hour breaks down to around 6000 square feet per week which isn't very fast in my opinion, it's a comfortable pace however.

I would say that an experienced finisher should be producing about 7300 square feet per week if he is working full time. The faster people will be turning out 8,000 to 10,000 square feet per week. That's also considering that they are turning out high quality work.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

I would like to know what some of you think is faster, hand tools or mechanical or pneumatic tools? I invested $5400 in Apla-Tech tools and I can finish with hand tools almost as fast. The Apla-tech tools also had high maintenance costs compared to hand tools. I would like to hear other thoughts on this as well and what your experience has been with various tools.


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## brdn_drywall (Apr 25, 2008)

i have never tried the apla-tec sytem by itself but combined it with graco (cfs) just looking at the system gives me a headache those coaters that are supposed to replace yur boxes look like a make work idea because they probably need to be followed by a knife for good results.The maintenance on the mark5 justify it's productiveness, jmo though.


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## A+ Texture LLC (Jan 10, 2009)

I don't have apla tech, but when I do it will be in tandem with my columbia boxes.


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## brdn_drywall (Apr 25, 2008)

drilled holes through my old columbia boxes and modified them for apla/graco system,could not bring myself to harming my tape tech ones


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## pobrown1 (Mar 2, 2009)

id like to know what some of these houses look like. on average it takes me and two other guys 35 hours to finish an average 12000 foot house with 9' ceilings. typically two bedrooms have vaulted ceilings and usually a large great room with some scaffold work. usually 40 sheets or so to finish from a scaffold. this includes putting on an average of 80 peices of corner bead.


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## tapingfool (Mar 11, 2009)

i think if you have the continuous flow boxes they are faster but the job needs to be big..


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

tapingfool said:


> i think if you have the continuous flow boxes they are faster but the job needs to be big..


Thanks for your input on this.

That was my view on them also. I had a rather large house about 3 years ago and one man working for me, the upstairs alone was about 14,000 square feet of board. I ran the apla-tech tools and put on quite a bit of mud myself while he went and did the hand things. Trouble is that he was so slow that the high production I generated didn't put me ahead. He no longer works for me of course and my thought is that if I had a guy that was actually earning his keep the day would have been more productive. I had coated the entire upstairs myself that day and put on about buckets of compound. The next day I was doing a lot of hand work however where the flats meet the inside angles in order to flatten them.

An earlier job I had done I did differently and with a kid that had some experience with finishing and with the apla-tech tools. It had about 10,000 square feet of board in this house and we put the tape on the inside angles and then second coated the flats in about 4.5 hours. I had him wipe the flat seams after I applied the compound with an arched drywall trowel. Why the trowel? It's faster than a knife on your second coat because in one pass you are tapering your edges and smothing the flat rather than 3 passes as you would have to with a knife. Incidentally the money I earned in that short time was equivalent to what I would have done in about 7 hours with hand tools.

So in my experience you can make time with automation if you have someone working with you and knows what they are doing.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

pobrown1 said:


> id like to know what some of these houses look like. on average it takes me and two other guys 35 hours to finish an average 12000 foot house with 9' ceilings. typically two bedrooms have vaulted ceilings and usually a large great room with some scaffold work. usually 40 sheets or so to finish from a scaffold. this includes putting on an average of 80 peices of corner bead.


Either your production time is very low or you had a lot of extras on that particular job. Can you maybe offer more information about it? How many cathedrals? Where there tray ceilings? Etc.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

A+ Texture LLC said:


> I don't have apla tech, but when I do it will be in tandem with my columbia boxes.


Does your production average more than 200 square feet per hour with your tools?


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## drywallnflorida (Sep 19, 2008)

JoeMudder said:


> Thanks for your input on this.
> 
> That was my view on them also. I had a rather large house about 3 years ago and one man working for me, the upstairs alone was about 14,000 square feet of board. I ran the apla-tech tools and put on quite a bit of mud myself while he went and did the hand things. Trouble is that he was so slow that the high production I generated didn't put me ahead. He no longer works for me of course and my thought is that if I had a guy that was actually earning his keep the day would have been more productive. I had coated the entire upstairs myself that day and put on about buckets of compound. The next day I was doing a lot of hand work however where the flats meet the inside angles in order to flatten them.
> 
> ...


 
Are you using the cfs boxes? When we run our cfs boxes we don't wipe 3 passes with a knife behind it. We only tune up the corners were we start the box from, the lap marks, and around light cans or boxs a lil.
We don't wipe over the whole joint with a knife. The boxes leave a nice finish.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

drywallnflorida said:


> Are you using the cfs boxes? When we run our cfs boxes we don't wipe 3 passes with a knife behind it. We only tune up the corners were we start the box from, the lap marks, and around light cans or boxs a lil.
> We don't wipe over the whole joint with a knife. The boxes leave a nice finish.


As mentioned in my post I was using apla-tech tools. It's a pneumatic system. Many finishers aren't aware of them yet, you can google "apla-tech" and you should get their web site.

I haven't tried their new taping system that resembles a bazooka, but it looks fast. I had purchased mine prior to them coming out with the taper, so when I taped with them I used a corner applicator to apply the compound, then layed the paper tape in by hand and then used a roll plow to wipe it out.

My hand taping isn't too bad however. On 8,000 square feet of board I can usually tape all the inside corners and put the second coat on all the flats in a day just using hand tools. When I talked to the people at apla-tech to learn what production levels were being achieved, it wasn't much faster than what I can do by hand. And for the maintenance costs it wasn't worth it to me. I can coat my inside angles by hand as fast as their angle coater does it because of the fact that the angles require two coats when using the apla-tech angle coater. They will tell you that you can coat both sides of the angles in one minute or less with their coater, and it's true because I've done it. What they don't tell you of course is the time it takes to go back around and pick all the corners and the bottoms of those angles. I did a lot of time studies on production using various methods and it takes me about 3.5 hours using hand tools to coat one side of the angles on about 8,000 square feet of board with some extras. such as a couple cathedrals or 9' ceilings. You might save yourself one hour with the apla-tech tools coating angles, but you have to spend $300.00 for the coating head. It just isn't worth it to me for the production I can do with hand tools. Also, the angle head broke on me and for the repairs on it isn't worth replacing in my book.

You can figure it out according to what you get per foot, but with hand tools my production level on average comes out to 193 square feet per hour. When I talked to the guy at apla-tech and we walked production levels according to what he has done with them, he told me that he did a 7,000 square foot job in two weekends. If he worked 8 hour days his production level was about 218 square feet per hour which isn't much higher than what I do with hand tools. And if he worked 10 hour days, that means I'm faster than the apla-tech tools which are also supposed to be faster than any of the mechanical tool systems.


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## drywallnflorida (Sep 19, 2008)

JoeMudder said:


> As mentioned in my post I was using apla-tech tools. It's a pneumatic system. Many finishers aren't aware of them yet, you can google "apla-tech" and you should get their web site.
> 
> I haven't tried their new taping system that resembles a bazooka, but it looks fast. I had purchased mine prior to them coming out with the taper, so when I taped with them I used a corner applicator to apply the compound, then layed the paper tape in by hand and then used a roll plow to wipe it out.
> 
> ...


 
I know about the alpa-techs, we are running them too, but we are running the cfs(continus flow system check out there website) with the slim line boxes, not the pneumatic system. We roll and glaze the angles when we tape them with the taping tube and then only have run them once with the 3" head. we only need to pick the corners, bottems and lap marks. they come out great for a light orange peel texture. my old man is super fast at runnin angles by hand (both sides at once) and the system smokes him by hand but you need to have two people doing it to make it worth it.
If not you spend too much time switchen back and forth between the tools.


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## A+ Texture LLC (Jan 10, 2009)

JoeMudder said:


> Does your production average more than 200 square feet per hour with your tools?


 Mine is it nill, now. Fired my help, not doing any new const. right now anyway, mostly remodels. And training the way I like things done.


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

drywallnflorida said:


> I know about the alpa-techs, we are running them too, but we are running the cfs(continus flow system check out there website) with the slim line boxes, not the pneumatic system. We roll and glaze the angles when we tape them with the taping tube and then only have run them once with the 3" head. we only need to pick the corners, bottems and lap marks. they come out great for a light orange peel texture. my old man is super fast at runnin angles by hand (both sides at once) and the system smokes him by hand but you need to have two people doing it to make it worth it.
> If not you spend too much time switchen back and forth between the tools.


What is your production level? Do you know your footage per hour? Or footage per week with two men?


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## big george (Feb 7, 2009)

JoeMudder said:


> I would like to know what some of you think is faster, hand tools or mechanical or pneumatic tools? I invested $5400 in Apla-Tech tools and I can finish with hand tools almost as fast. The Apla-tech tools also had high maintenance costs compared to hand tools. I would like to hear other thoughts on this as well and what your experience has been with various tools.


 Alot of posts always seem to talk about production.With the mechanical tools alot of times your trying to get fixed or set right.They have to be super clean(bazooka),with hand tools it's all up to you.The only thing it's nice to have a roller @ flusher.A's i said in my last post make a days pay.:thumbup:


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## JoeMudder (Sep 13, 2008)

big george said:


> Alot of posts always seem to talk about production.With the mechanical tools alot of times your trying to get fixed or set right.They have to be super clean(bazooka),with hand tools it's all up to you.The only thing it's nice to have a roller @ flusher.A's i said in my last post make a days pay.:thumbup:


Thanks for your post. The reason for this type of discussion is that we want to increase our days pay. Drywall work everywhere is highly competitive and if we can figure a way to even earn another $20 a day, that adds up every month and can make a difference for some folks.


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