Another cowboy found.

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As a landlord I would be interested on how long a good eicr takes to complete on a std 3 bed property (obv no such thing as standard).
And what would be a competitive price.
Btw I'm not fishing for a price as even though I use a letting company. All service and repairs I have access to trades who I know will do the correct job not a bodge job..
electrician, gas fitter ect that I always use go in and vet the property making me a list of things that need doing. I've never said no leave it. They have confidence I will stick by them and I have confidence they won't rip me off.
I've had this discussion many times with electricians, landlords and agents. The consensus seems to be that pretty much any EICR should be done within 1 - 4 hours (and these are the supposedly reputable firms). The idea of anything longer than that seems to be bordering on the ludicrous to them.

However, just to give you some context, I have 22 years experience as an electrician across various industries, and spent 3 of those years working for a frim who did nothing but domestic and commercial EICR's. They never touched any remedial work, so had no vested interest, and did everything by the book.

I learned more in my 3 years there than in the other 19 years combined. Despite what a lot of electricians will tell you, EICR's are NOT something that just any sparky can do. They require knowledge and experience way above the average to do them properly, interpret the results and produce an accurate report.

As an educational excercise my last apprentice and I tested my own house, in order to go through the process and teach him properly. It's a 3 bed semi detached with a seperate 2 way consumer unit in the garage, a total of 13 circuits.

Bog standard.

It took us 9 hours to carry out the EICR properly, including about 10% sampling (removing of covers and carrying out visual inspections), which is the bare minimum. And keep in mind that this is a property that I live in and know like the back of my hand.

Yet I could go online this morning and find a minimum of 5 sparkys willing to do it for less than 100 quid within the hour.

I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about the state of the industry and the cluster**** that is EICR's.
 
That would be a cheap garage at £35 an hour, I find the ones that often complain about electrician's prices drive Land Rovers or BMW's and quite happily pay main dealer hourly rates of £130+ per hour for servicing and repairs

doesn't matter what the rate is, point is they don't get paid per hour what they charge per hour
 
I'm guessing outside London it's around £25-£30 per hour for a sparky so £150 should cover it. Nice one

I'm guessing outside London it's around £25-£30 per hour for a sparky so £150 should cover it. Nice one
Sparkys are earning £25 an hour employed on the books. My 19 year old daughter works in a burger shop and gets 11 quid an hour, so that's about the same rate a self employed sparky charging £25 an hour could expect to earn. In fact it's probably more.

I built up a relatively successful local firm of 5 lads doing 95% domestic work and working for a lot of landlords and agents. My plan was to pay my mortgage off as soon as possible, which I manged to do in 2018, aged 38. The very next month I laid everyone but my apprentice off and told 70% of my customers to do one. By Christmas 2019 I'd wound down the business completely and gone into web design.

The chaos, hassle and cost of being a sparky, along with the level of legal responsibility that customers don't know or care about isn't remotely worth it. I wouldn't do it for £100 an hour, never mind £25.

By the way, overheads in that business were around the 40 - 50% mark BEFORE labour. You do the maths.
 
I'm guessing outside London it's around £25-£30 per hour for a sparky so £150 should cover it. Nice one
I think you are being highly optimistic at £25 - £30 / hour I doubt you could cover overheads and earn a reasonable crust for that rate more like £40+ / hour even in the less affluent areas of the UK
So your saying a electrician will earn over 80k per year? Working a 37.5 hour week? According to the National AVG it is around 35k per year

Optimism, (as mentioned), and ignorance of the difference between turnover -vs- taxable earnings abounds from some of these posts..
Probably similar to the sort of mindset that thinks your local fuel station actually earns £180+ per litre of fuel??

I would expect any competent tradesperson working with an invisible product that can kill a healthy adult in less than a second....

To be suitably insured in-case they botch-up and accidentally kill a family loved one, or friend..

And... to keep up-to-date with the latest wiring regulations....
(e.g. purchase all relevant documentation... and/or, take any relevant update training courses)

And... to purchase industry standard recognised test equipment to verify that their work will fail safe..

And.. to ensure that any test meters they have purchased are still within all essential calibration standards...
(e.g. re-calibration tests by an independent company and/or regular self test with check-boxes etc..)

And.. issues signed certificates and/or reports to confirm that their work is compliant with the current wiring regulations, leaving a paper trail by which they could be prosecuted should they try and cut corners.

etc...
etc...
etc...

I cannot believe any person with more than half a brain cell would ever contemplate employing a tradesperson to work on their electrical installation, at a reduced hourly rate than many whitegoods repair tradespersons would charges... or BT/Openreach coming to fix your phone/broadband cable....

Anybody only willing to pay £25-£30 per hour, deserves to get the cowboy workmanship/response that is only possible at these sort of labour rates!

(p.s. Think I may have been charging those sort of costs approx 15 or 20+years ago?
But, they are not reasonable, feasible, or anywhere near sustainable to cover current overheads and operational costs.)
 
Builders were on my current job on Wednesday, and we got round to the usual questions. How busy are you, what hours do you work, what's your hourly rate.

As usual they were of the opinion that I had a jag sat on the drive at home, worked 9-3 like they appeared to, and was taking home £400 a day.

I got fed up with trying to defend us, so just let them get on with it.

I wish I was on £400 a day thats for sure !
 
£400.00 a day is only £50.00/hr for an eight hour day, I was charging that over ten years ago in central London, I did reduce that to £35.00/hr for traveling time, I retired early and don't miss work one bit, but would add an EICR on a three bed would take me 1.5 days, one to do the testing and the other half day to fill out the forms.
 
Builders were on my current job on Wednesday, and we got round to the usual questions. How busy are you, what hours do you work, what's your hourly rate.

As usual they were of the opinion that I had a jag sat on the drive at home, worked 9-3 like they appeared to, and was taking home £400 a day.

I got fed up with trying to defend us, so just let them get on with it.

I wish I was on £400 a day thats for sure !
There's nothing to defend. In a free market economy the proof is in the pudding. You could charge £4,000 a day, if people are paying it, then you're 'worth' it. If they're not paying it, then you're not worth it. This is the very definition of subjective value.

As for what you take home, you are a qualified expert with the skill and experience to work on systems that are a) extremely dangerous, and b) providing a commodity that is vital to our everyday standard of living. You also have the added burden of a ton of legal responsibility and liability on your shoulders, and the knowledge that every cert you sign and every job you do has the potential to land you in prison. You SHOULD be on good money. That should be the natural and inevitable outcome.
 
£400.00 a day is only £50.00/hr for an eight hour day, I was charging that over ten years ago in central London, I did reduce that to £35.00/hr for traveling time, I retired early and don't miss work one bit, but would add an EICR on a three bed would take me 1.5 days, one to do the testing and the other half day to fill out the forms.
The way we used to do them 15 years ago, and they way they should be done. Today we have the sparky equivalent of the baked bean price wars. I'm just waiting for some numpty to offer landlords a buy one, get one free deal or something similarly stupid.
 
I employed a plumber from Checkertrade on dayworks at £250.00/day, what a numpty, would not listen to what I wanted and was like bull in a China shop, he worked very dirtily, the dust sheets where constantly kicked out from under his feet, IMO he should never work in a domestic environment, eventually it worked out at £139.00/day with what I eventually paid him, he compromised my alarm system by drilling through where I told him not too and left me with a very damp kitchen overnight where a compression fitting pulled off the 15mm mains, in all not a very enjoyable experience, should I have paid him at all? He did work and most of it was usable, so I paid him what I thought was fair.
 
My mate has his electric gates fixed earlier this week.

15 minutes on site

£195 + VAT

Wtf
He must of known the call out cost
15 mins on site what was the travel
On a call out if I’m there 5 mins or up to 1 hr same price
 
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