Piping and wiring 3 a/c's....How much would you charge??

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scawt

Member
Just piped and wired up 2 5 ton a/c's and 1 6 ton a/c for a contractor. We agreed on $500 for labor which seems reasonable to me. Ran about 150' of pipe plus mounting the disconnects and pulling wire. Took me all day (7 hours) and probably another 4 tomorrow so 11 hours total. I ended up spending about $600 on material (pipe, wire, fittings, disconnects..) For some reason the $600 is throwing me off, but I don't have much left over except for some fittings and probably a little over-estimation on my wire lengths...


What do you guys think? I bought most of my material at HD, except for a breaker ($35) and disconnect (3P 240V 60A $129) Could I have done better on the material??
 
mcclary's electrical

mcclary's electrical

Senior Member
Location
VA
If you don't make a minimum of 10% off your material, you won't have the money to warranty any material. If you do enough work,,,,you're gonna have failures, you gotta have money to replace those failing items (bath fan last six months and quits, or gfi last 2 months and quits, ETC. You have to make at least 10 % on EVERYTHING you sell, at a minimum
 
Rewire

Rewire

Senior Member
Location
Lake of the Ozarks
Does HD charge more for cut lenghts of wire over buying a full role?Maybe you should by more through your supply house and that way you can get a better price on those big ticket items HD doesn't carry.
 
iMuse97

iMuse97

Senior Member
Location
Chicagoland
Rewire said:
Does HD charge more for cut lenghts of wire over buying a full role?Maybe you should by more through your supply house and that way you can get a better price on those big ticket items HD doesn't carry.
Click to expand...

You can always tell the supply house that HD sells it for $NX.nx, and can they do it better? Often they can. Even HD sells wire cheaper in bulk quantities. I usually don't let small customers see all the invoices/receipts for materials b/c I don't always buy just for the job. Works out well that way.
 
e57

e57

Senior Member
Location
San Francisco, CA
Did you price out the take-off for the material out front + mark-up % before you bid it, or were you planning to do that now?

Remember you make money before you get the job by providing a profitable price.
 
celtic

celtic

Senior Member
Location
NJ
scawt said:
Could I have done better on the material??
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I'm wondering how you can survive by billing at $45.45 /hr ....

Does that include:
- initial walk-through with client
- time spent estimating
- trips to the building dept [filing, inspection, etc ~ where required]
- trips to HD for material
- insurance, bonding, insurance
- etc

IMHO, doing "better on the material" should be the least of your concerns.
 
Buck Parrish

Buck Parrish

Senior Member
Location
NC & IN
scawt said:
Just piped and wired up 2 5 ton a/c's and 1 6 ton a/c for a contractor. We agreed on $500 for labor which seems reasonable to me. Ran about 150' of pipe plus mounting the disconnects and pulling wire. Took me all day (7 hours) and probably another 4 tomorrow so 11 hours total. I ended up spending about $600 on material (pipe, wire, fittings, disconnects..) For some reason the $600 is throwing me off, but I don't have much left over except for some fittings and probably a little over-estimation on my wire lengths...


What do you guys think? I bought most of my material at HD, except for a breaker ($35) and disconnect (3P 240V 60A $129) Could I have done better on the material??
Click to expand...

You have got a long way to go. As a favor to you I would suggest you take a bussiness course or two. ;)
Did you take any classes for electrical?
Maybe
Point is " It does not matter how good of an electrician you are" If you are a bad businness man. You won't make much money.
Not saying you are . Just stating facts for every body.
 
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scawt

Member
Buck Parrish said:
You have got a long way to go. As a favor to you I would suggest you take a bussiness course or two. ;)
Did you take any classes for electrical?
Maybe
Point is " It does not matter how good of an electrician you are" If you are a bad businness man. You won't make much money.
Not saying you are . Just stating facts for every body.
Click to expand...

Haha funny I actually start business 101 at the local community college next Monday. I'm still young and fairly new to the trade, normally work for contractors. This was more of a favor for a friend of a friend. It ended up taking me a total of 11 hours. Grand total for labor and material was $1100ish. The guy paid me $1000 cash because thats all he had on him. I'm supposed to go back in a couple of days to hook up a swamp cooler. $150 for labor. From what everyone has said I obviously need to mark up my material a lot to offset the crappy price we negotiated on labor.

I'm worried he's gonna try to screw me out of that extra $100 he owes me.

Any tips???
 
kwired

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
scawt said:
Haha funny I actually start business 101 at the local community college next Monday. I'm still young and fairly new to the trade, normally work for contractors. This was more of a favor for a friend of a friend. It ended up taking me a total of 11 hours. Grand total for labor and material was $1100ish. The guy paid me $1000 cash because thats all he had on him. I'm supposed to go back in a couple of days to hook up a swamp cooler. $150 for labor. From what everyone has said I obviously need to mark up my material a lot to offset the crappy price we negotiated on labor.

I'm worried he's gonna try to screw me out of that extra $100 he owes me.

Any tips???
Click to expand...

consider it a $100 education fee and do it differently next time
 
petersonra

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
scawt said:
Just piped and wired up 2 5 ton a/c's and 1 6 ton a/c for a contractor. We agreed on $500 for labor which seems reasonable to me. Ran about 150' of pipe plus mounting the disconnects and pulling wire. Took me all day (7 hours) and probably another 4 tomorrow so 11 hours total. I ended up spending about $600 on material (pipe, wire, fittings, disconnects..) For some reason the $600 is throwing me off, but I don't have much left over except for some fittings and probably a little over-estimation on my wire lengths...


What do you guys think? I bought most of my material at HD, except for a breaker ($35) and disconnect (3P 240V 60A $129) Could I have done better on the material??
Click to expand...

The way i see it you worked for 11 hours and made $500 for it. That seems pretty skimpy to me.

I don't think it matters how much you charge for materials versus labor, but you need to make the total come out to something you can live with.

It is very hard to beat the price on things you can get at the big box store. One thing people tend to forget is that often there is a big box store close by and the electrical supply place is on the other side of town. Even if you saved 10% on material, the extra cost in time and gas to drive to supply house rather than stopping on your way at HD, might be another $100.
 
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stars13bars2

Senior Member
You are worried that he is going to screw you out of the $100 that he owes you. Let me be the bearer of the bad news, he already has.
 
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