What would you estimate?

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JoeNorm

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I am not asking this question to use actual numbers you throw out, I plan to do this job mostly free for a friend. But I was curious IF I was in business for myself what I might charge.

Customer needs a 3-wire range run upgraded to a 4-wire(range manual gives no indication a 3-wire is OK to use). This job will involve about 25 feet of 6/3 through a crawl. And I mean crawl, and a little nasty but not terrible. At the range will require a new surface mount box and receptacle. Getting up into the panel looks pretty easy as there is a chase up to a surface mount main panel.

So I'd say if I had all the materials and things went smoothly I could do the job in 2-4 hours. But at say $100 per hour, this just doesn't seem worth it to crawl around in the dirt.

If you had this simple job, how would you bid it? Would it be $500? $1000? $1500? More? I have no idea. I read a lot on here about making sure to charge enough so I just am trying to get an idea how to do that. My brain gets pretty stuck on hourly as that is how I have worked my whole life.

Again, this is just an exercise to gain info about pricing. Let me know what other details you might consider.
 
First, I would take care of the material pricing. I did an EV charger receptacle back in February on a "friend-ish" basis. They're not really friends, but I've done a whole lot of work at their house through a remodeling contractor. This time he asked them to call me directly.

It was about 65 ft through a basement that was half-finished. 25 feet of that cable had to be fished through a fur down.

What I did was look at the price of a small roll of wire, like 50 ft. And I got a price per foot based on that. Then I compared that to the cost of a full roll, and thought it would be better just to buy a full roll and charge them for that, and I keep the leftover which was about half the roll.

So at that time, that roll of wire with $340.00
Now it's almost $500.00

Then I added in the price of a 2 pole breaker and two twin breakers in a CH panel, a cut-in 2 gang box, 4-wire recep and cover and that was about $90.00

So I was about $430 of money that I spent

I added $300 then I had a half roll of 6-3 with ground as a bonus

It took me about two and a half hours to get it done. And this was a friend price. If I was doing this for a cold call customer I would have added at least 200 more dollars
 
IMO if you have to crawl around in the dirt and filth you should include the cost of the time it takes you to go home and shower and change into clean clothes.

Or to buy one use clothing you can throw away.
 
4 hour job, unless you have another 4 hour job the same day, you should just charge a day rate.

That's how contractors bleed money, because you're not recovering your overhead.

Or you'll need to raise your rate to recover 1 day's worth of overhead in 4 hours.

Even if you had another 4 hour job, you'd end up working ten or more hours to get in 8 billable hours, after you count in travel time.
 
Seven-Delta-FortyOne said:
4 hour job, unless you have another 4 hour job the same day, you should just charge a day rate.

That's how contractors bleed money, because you're not recovering your overhead.

Or you'll need to raise your rate to recover 1 day's worth of overhead in 4 hours.

Even if you had another 4 hour job, you'd end up working ten or more hours to get in 8 billable hours, after you count in travel time.
Click to expand...

So what would a day rate be?
 
My day rate personally is $840.00

I mark up electrical materials 40-50%, but I charge for picking up materials, planning, writing contracts, looking at the job, etc.

So if I spent 1/2 hour looking at the job, hour to plan it, call in my materials, write up the permit paper work, scan it, send it in, then start the actual work day with picking up the permit, picking up supplies, and then go do a 6 hour job, I’ll bid it for one day for the work, plus the preliminaries, maybe 2 hours @$105/hour, so that brings me to $1050, plus markup on materials. Usually a couple hundred for small one day jobs.

For small one day electrical service jobs, I want to clear at least a grand a day.

My overhead is included in that.
 
It should be noted that my rate works for my geographical location, the type of work I do, my companies overhead, the local trade climate, and my personal financial and profit goals.

This is not necessarily meaningful in any other area, or for any other person or company
 
Seven-Delta-FortyOne said:
It should be noted that my rate works for my geographical location, the type of work I do, my companies overhead, the local trade climate, and my personal financial and profit goals.

This is not necessarily meaningful in any other area, or for any other person or company
Click to expand...
Yes, of course. But it is interesting to compare some real numbers within the trade. Thanks for sharing.
 
ZIP up bunny suit at most painter stores runs under 20 bucks. Last time I used one it was 12 bucks. On a rewire of a house I might go thru ten of them. Add it to the dirty crawl jobs price. Unzip and toss. Save your clothing. And Charge Large.
 
What I personally would do in this case is figure out the total for the materials cost and put your make up on that. I make things up typically 50% if materials are under $500. Don’t forget to add a miscellaneous cost to that say an extra $10-$15 for screws, staples abs such. And figure how long it make take you. I would add an extra half hour just to CYA.


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if you don’t feel it’s worth your time for the job just price it to feel comfortable. Unless your hurting for money another job will come.

I tend to waist my time and throw these type of jobs in my estimating software. Gives me a good idea because I am always finish my job below there recommend hours. If it’s a pain to crawl and I don’t want the job I’ll go with NECA hour rates on the software.
I’ll do almost any job if I can get those NECA hours
 
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