By Bruce Curtis

(All photos courtesy of Swale King)

(Los Osos, California, 11/16/05) The verdict is in: flat lawns are boring and perfect slopes passé, but the price of custom soil profiling and drainage is off-putting for many. As landscape design moves to more natural, more visually appealing shapes and layouts, designers and contractors are looking to soil moving equipment makers to help them meet landscape client demand for soil profiling and drainage. Likewise, residential and commercial developers are looking to reduce labor costs yet still offer landscape plans that include custom ground and swale work.

A new Florida company may just have their answer. Swale King, in Palm Coast, has invented a fully articulating box-and-blade unit that tackles some sticky and complex land-forming jobs and completes them in a fraction of the time.

More homeowners are looking for attractive landscape design that goes beyond flat, uniform yards; slopes, hills and swales are getting more popular, and for good reasons: better drainage, more natural appearance and view, better privacy and landscape plant variety.

In fast-growing cities like Bakersfield, Atlanta and Las Vegas, new housing demands nearly outstrips construction capacity as contractors race to meet tight deadlines. They often run short of skilled landscape workers for final phase work like drainage and landscape. Swale King is one way both developers and landscape professionals can leverage their resources, producing quality work quickly under a tight schedule.

"This is a piece of equipment the industry has been looking for for 20 years," says Sugarland Texas contractor John Norseworthy, of Percision tractor services. "It's unique in that it pivots: the mechanism allows it to split in the center so you can do from a flat to a 30 degree cut, which works very well for us in situations where we're working zero-lot-line houses."

Connected to a compact tractor or skid/steer, the Swale King's patented independent cutting blades work in both forward and reverse directions, creating correct drainage swales quickly and precisely. The tiltable, articulating blades are independently adjustable, solving frustrating problems such as working in narrow spaces between houses. The need to cut drainage swales between homes is a common frustration for contractors, according to Swale King CEO, Lloyd Austin, because in narrow spaces, a conventional blade can't reach in close enough.

"When you do this traditionally with a blade and you only have six to eight feet, you can only tilt the blade a little bit each way," and, as Austin explains, "you end up having to take in a crew in to do most of the digging work by hand."

That adds labor costs, of course, but the hydraulically powered Swale King works well in tight spaces. The units use standard hydraulic connectors, making it a snap to hook up to most types of compact tractors and skid steers, says Austin.

"We have two versions, there's a 3-point traditional hitch and then there is an attachment for a skid steer. Now, when contractors go onto a jobsite, they can do whatever they want; contouring, backfilling, back blading, box scraping and swale cutting."

The Swale King also does away with many frustrating and time-consuming hassles common to grading slopes with conventional blades. Sloped properties present no problem for Swale King units, says Austin.

"If you've got a blade and your tractor's tilted, only part of the blade is going to be in the dirt, such as a sloped yard; how are you going to get the blade to contour around that kind of ground?" Swale King's patented adjustable blades solve the sloped site problem by adjusting to almost any about any moderate hillside situation.

"If the lot is sloped fifteen degrees, for instance, you can put the left wing down or the right wing down two or four degrees and contour your yard anywhere from zero to 30 degrees; each wing is independently operated, plus of course you have the traditional up/down control as well."

Austin also points out that the Swale King is all pro-grade, made from thick 3/8" inch moldboard, reinforced against the back plate. Hardened cutting edges are mounted front and back, so not only can exact cuts be made going forward, the operator can just as easily cut and shape in reverse as well, saving time.

"You can move dirt forward or backward," and that, says Austin, makes working in mature neighborhoods where pavement and sidewalks already exist a much neater proposition. "You don't have to drag dirt out into the street and that's a pretty unique feature."

Hard soils can slow work tremendously, but these units come with an adjustable scarfier hook that makes short work of hard packed or dense soils and allowing the blades to cut with precision, with scarcely any slowdown in pace.

Priced approximately at $2,000 for a full-featured unit, the buyer receives a tool that is much more useful than any conventional box scraper. The Swale King combines backfill, hard soil shaping, box-scraper, contouring, back-blading and swale cutting functions all in one unit. Austin points out that the unit was designed with the ability to contour uneven or sloping ground. A multi-handle hydraulic control system lets the operator angle or rotate each blade up to 35 degrees, relative to the other.

Homeowners and commercial property owners looking to keep costs under control should look for landscape contractors that operate a Swale King. Contractors report that the units save them anywhere from $100 to $150 a day in labor costs, savings can be passed along to customers. Landscapers can pay off the cost of a new Swale King in less than a month at that rate.

"It probably adds at least 40% to our productivity," Norseworthy says, adding,"in some scenarios takes an impossible job and makes it possible.

"Flexibility is perhaps the main advantage to contractors and builders, when a Swale King is used to take care of landscape contouring and swale cutting. The work can be done more precisely and more quickly, meaning more jobs per day with lower labor costs.

Some Swale King Features:

• Designed for high torque loads.

• Independent blade control.

• Flexible enough for small or large landscape jobs.

• Blades available to fit various sizes and horsepower tractors.

• Standard 3-point tractor hitch, or skid/steer attach.

• Standard front and rear blades.

Austin says landscapers are impressed because they know they can save time and money on jobs, so they can be more competitive. In fact everybody in the landscape business seems to be amazed by these flexible box blade units; Austin gets calls from nearly everyone who visits his website at www.swaleking.com.

Agricultural users are discovering the Swale King's versatility, says Austin. "It's great for contouring ponds and in tight spaces around orchards; one orchard owners says this is better than dozer. I call it a three-in-one, a blade, box scraper, swale maker, and much more."

Pond contouring is usually an expensive and time consuming proposition because gentle slopes aren't always easy to cut, and times several passes are needed to get it right. A Swale King will eliminate most of those hassles, says company officials, by allowing the operator to run parallel, making cuts with precision in just one pass simply by adjusting the hydraulic wing angle.

"A box scraper won't do a swale, I don't know of any way to do it, except by hand," Austin explains, "this is 3–5 times faster."

Both blades may be operated together like a conventional box scraper, but each blade also articulates independently, creating just about any kind of fixed angle imaginable including V-types. Swale King beats a V-blade because it has a built-in spoons that automatically clear dirt, instead of creating extra labor afterwards like conventional scrapers.

The Swale King is also hefty enough to get the job done under heavy-cycle, severe duty situations. That's where CEO Lloyd Austin's heavy equipment background kicks in; he's worked for large corporations that manufacture heavy diesel powered equipment, oil field gear and even precision computer fuel injection hardware. When you build giant diesel drive systems for 100-ton-plus mine dump trucks, you know how to offer a solid piece of machinery.

"This is no light duty unit, made of stamped tin for 20 hp garden tractors, this commercial grade equipment," says Austin. He notes that skid/steer operators can be rough on equipment, but the Swale King should take that kind of use all day long.

For more information contact Swale King www.swaleking.com.