An hour to unplug all the appliances and bulbs @ 1 hour. I firmly believe I could do my 4-bed detached house in less than 15 mins.
In your own perfect house which was built yesterday, that might be possible, as you know where everything is. In this same house, the testing and inspection would only take half an hour, since everything would be 100% in the correct place, installed correctly and properly labelled, and there would be a comprehensive set of test documents and wiring diagrams from when the wiring was installed.
In reality, there is no way it could be 15 minutes. Testing will take several hours, and repairs even longer.
This is because of such things as the hidden TV amp in the loft, bathroom extractor fans with no isolators, 12V downlighters with the transformers screwed to the joists in the inacesssible ceiling void, garages and lofts stuffed with 30 years worth of junk, the connection for the gas hob ignition being on the floor at the back of a cupboard, the metal light switches where fools chopped off the earth wires, socket outlets behind radiators, kitchen appliances wired directly to flex outlets, and so on. This list could run to several pages.
It's all very well saying that "we do have to make a living you know", but if you charge £500 a day, .
500 per day for one person is not realistic, and if this is the total amount for the CU change, at least 100 of that would be for parts.
350 would be a reasonable price for a straightforward change of a 4 way Wylex board. It is still a full day to do.
Problem is, you have already stated that your house has 12 circuits somehow crammed into a 6 way board.
But even at £300 per day - a 40% drop - you're still clearing well over £45k per year after tax (but before expenses). .
Assuming of course, that 100% of every working day is actually spent working, so no time at all for quotes, driving to various jobs, waiting for people who are not in/haven't bothered to get up yet, purchasing supplies, completing paperwork, taking cheques to the bank and everything else. Not to mention those pesky 'expenses'.
The final statement about 6 hours being rounded up to a day is a corker! I work a 7.5 hour day and that equates to a 25% surcharge for no reason.
This is not about 'rounding up'. A price for a day is the same, regardless of it being 6 hours, 8 hours or 10 hours. Taking off 25% just because the job took slightly less time isn't going to happen - that money would just be lost, as there is no way to magically invent another paying job for the last hour of the day.
As for costs, nothing on RFs list is a 'one off cost', and operating costs for a year (even for one person and one van) will be far more than you imagine (hint - the total will probably be a 5 figure one). Try actually putting a price to some of the items on that list.
Electrical work is far more than 'It's only connecting the tails and the existing wiring'. Unfortunately, as most of it can't be seen afterwards, many people have completely unrealistic expectations of price.