Learning to estimate - Opinions please!

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sw_ross

Senior Member
Location
NoDak
I am experimenting/learning to do an estimate. I have Holt's book on estimating and am playing around with ideas in the book. I'm most familiar with residential, but have a fair amount of commercial experience also, so I'm starting with estimating an imaginary residential project.

Feel free to critique my attempt!

The imaginary house is your typical 1600 sq ft, 3-bedroom, 2-bath single level house. Has a 2-car garage that has a 5kw heater. Heat source for the house is a propane furnace (common where I'm at), with A/C, electric hot water heat, electric range. The house is located (assumed) in town, so minimal vehicle time.

I came up with the following bid for the project, $8,535.
This house would typically be on the market for ~ 250-275K in the part of the country that I'm in.

Does sound crazy high, crazy low, or just crazy!!

Thanks for you input and responses!
Sky
 

brantmacga

Señor Member
Location
Georgia
Occupation
Former Child
It's hard to say exactly, but for a code job, you sound reasonable for MY area (in my opinion at least).

You're a little over $5/ft, and that's about what my residential jobs add up to for basic devices and appliances. By the time you add in all the extras, I'm usually up to around $8-$10/ft. That said, most guys here do residential for less than $4/ft which is why I do so little of it.

I do a full take-off on every job and not sq/ft pricing. I have assemblies made for my resi take-off's, and that's what you need to learn how to do if you're not already doing it. And then just plug in your labor and O&P to get your price.

I know there are people on here in other parts of the country that will be far higher.


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sw_ross

Senior Member
Location
NoDak
Assemblies

Assemblies

Thanks for the response!
Yeah, I've been learning about doing "assemblies" for my estimate.
I did them manually (without software) to learn how to do them the hard way! Ideally once I learn a little bit more and gain some confidence I'll purchase some software like turbo-bid and see how that goes!
 

active1

Senior Member
Location
Las Vegas
Too many variables in sf electrical pricing.
At the end of the estimating process I would do a sf price calc just to let me know where I'm at to make sure I didn't forget something major.
 
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