Ballast Change

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mtnelectrical

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Essex, New Jersey
What is the ball park price to change ballast and lamps in a commercial place? Ballast is for 2 F96T12 lamps cold start 120V. Fixtures are 10' high in a storage building, travel time is 10 minutes and it might be from 15 to 25 fixtures to repair. Ballast & 2 lamps per fixture.
 
Anytime I do commercial service calls it is time and material. You can't give a price on repairing something unless you have a set guideline to go by. It takes as long as it takes. Remember, they called you and it works out best for both parties. You don't get shafted and they don't get the shaft. Make sure you mark up your material. That is your profit.
 
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memyselfandI said:
Anytime I do commercial service calls it is time and material. You can't give a price on repairing something unless you have a set guideline to go by. It takes as long as it takes. Remember, they called you and it works out best for both parties. You don't get shafted and they don't get the shaft. Make sure you mark up your material. That is your profit.
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i sure hope your profit is more than the markup on your material.
 
mtnelectrical said:
What is the ball park price to change ballast and lamps in a commercial place? Ballast is for 2 F96T12 lamps cold start 120V. Fixtures are 10' high in a storage building, travel time is 10 minutes and it might be from 15 to 25 fixtures to repair. Ballast & 2 lamps per fixture.
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a ballast that size is probably 1 an hour. what do you charge an hour for service? 150% of ballast and tubes.
 
Have you visited the job? If this is a storage building, how about access? I have spent as much time moving stuff underneath as it took to repair fixture.
 
memyselfandi,

sorry if you took that the wrong way. my point was that I hope you have profit built into your hourly rate as well. And that you were not simply relying on the material markup.

what happens if you have 10 hours into a job and only $100 in material? that was my concern.
 
emahler said:
what happens if you have 10 hours into a job and only $100 in material? that was my concern.
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...or if the customer is one of the "we'll supply the material" types?
 
celtic said:
...or if the customer is one of the "we'll supply the material" types?
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there you go being difficult again.:)

bradley is on the right track....you can do it two ways:

1) set up or have a flat rate system in place that accounts for the average install time based on the conditions:

ie - 1 ballast
2 lamps
misc wirenuts, tape, etc
1 man 0.7 hours
total price $145 (whatever you come up with based on your numbers)

if it's over 10 ft, you can do an adder. if you need a man lift, you can do an adder. etc.

or

2) figure out the total cost for the job, worst case scenerio and go from there.

ie - 25 ballasts
50 lamps
misc wirenuts, tape, etc
16 man hours

total price $2500 or $100/ballast (again, these are pulled from thin air)

then you can either give them a price of $2500 to fix everything, or quote them any variation you want (per piece, min charge - $X for 10 fixtures, adder of $Y for anything over 10 fixtures)

T&M is an option, but good luck getting $150+ a ballast on T&M without them watching the clock and being upset.
 
If you give them a guote make sure they understand if run into anything beside a ballast & lamp change that is extra. Sometimes we have gone to change ballast & lamps and then spend time tracing wires, replacing sockets (depending on age of fixtures) etc.
 
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