For the sake of an example, let's say he needs to make £500 on this job and there's £100 worth of materials, making £600 payable
If he was going to charge you for £450 labour, and £150 including mark up on the materials, and you deny him that markup he will simply bump up his labour charge to £500.
But unless your buying power is greater than his, and you can buy the materials for less than £100, it'll cost you more overall.
I will assume then by your example that you think that £600 is a fair price for replacing a domestic consumer unit and getting power out to a shed situated 2.5 metres away from the house or about 5m away 'as the cable lies' (
)
This is how i plan to do it:
Get 18 year old (currently unemployed) son to dig 2.5 m long , 600mm deep trench between house. He said he'd do it for a tenner I gave him
£15
s/h populated, functional Memera 2000 CU with 100A 30ma RCD (tested).
£31 ( i used a free £10 e-bay gift voucher to get this final price)
Extra mcb's ( due to this thread & not included in original CU sale 2 x B32A & 2 x B6A delivered
£2.50 ( i used another free £7.50 e-bay gift voucher to get this price)
9.8m 3 core 6mm SWA cable
£11.63
Brand new 2 way 'Garage' CU
£21
Yellow Buried electrical cable warning tape
£3
20mm Masonry drill
£7
Services of local Electrician ( Boxed advert in local Yellow Pages ) @ £25 per hour, estimated job to take 1-2 hours
£50
Couple of lengths of plastic waste pipe
£3
All of the other hardware needed to complete this job i already have as left overs from other projects in other houses , lets give them a value of
£30 though
I'm not going to put a price on my own labour time as i want the job done, i have plenty of spare time to do it and i enjoy doing this kind of stuff - it's relaxation & therapy to me.
My Total = £175 , which is £425 in my pocket.
When i invited the lecky round to give me a quote I didn't have a clue what he was going to say. I told him what my idea's where , i told him what i'd already done ( dug trench and laid cable) and what i intended to do, and obviously what i would like him to do. He was a very nice young chap, he obviously knew his stuff from what he was saying ( I'm an electrician too remember ).
On this basis he gave me a quote, i thought it reasonable and said i would be in touch early next month, after the Power Company have fitted my isolator at the service head.
I'm not running a charity for poor, overworked and underpaid electricians. I work hard for my money too. I am also Highly qualified and experienced in my field, and just like you get paid for what i know as much as what i do.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do something they do not wish to do here....
Remind me again how you test that MCBs work properly?
I made a mistake there , it was the 100A 30ma RCD that was guaranteed as fully functional and tested, not the MCB's.
We got talking about test equipment, he told me that his tester cost him over £800 , i assume he will be able to re-test the RCD's for me prior to fit , these are the main lifes savers after all.
As they seem to be sealed at manufacture , I don't know how you would test an MCB as the only way i can think of doing it would be to supply it with its stated trip current & voltage, then slowly ramp up the current until it trips. 240 vac at say 100 amps anybody , i wouldn't lick it .
Basically if i buy an MCB and it is made by a reputable company to a given standard ( e.g. BS EN 60898 ) and it shows no signs of mechanical damage, or signs of electrical damage through obvious overheating , etc then I would have to assume that it is servicable, why wouldn't I ?
Brand new/sealed off the shelf Items can be found to be faulty on fit too you know.... The manufacturer will only check test samples , not every single item off the production line....
In the first instance as long as the problem isn't that you can't turn it off, then i would check a suspect faulty item by transposing it with another unit of the same value on a circuit that is known to work and see what happens. Perhaps you guys carry an 'in line' plug in fuse or MCB test rig to daisy chain in so as not to overload a circuit with a 'permanent closed' faulty MCB ??? something like this;
http://photos.imageevent.com/sidandcoke/generaldumpinggroundforgashpiccys/large/Safety rig.JPG
An MCB with a 'permanent open' fault will be pretty easy to spot
.
OK, so in that spirit:
it is now buried 600mm below a patio.
Do you expect the electrician to sign that off?
I don't live in Part P Land. I have contacted Building control twice now and the sparky also confirmed when he came round that i can do the whole lot myself if i wish. I reckon that half and half is pretty safe.
I am pretty sure that i will be able to prove to anybody that cares to drop in unexpectedly to check ( that'll be nobody BTW) that my installation has been installed to at least BS7671 standard. Thats why i am employing a qualified spark for a couple of hours or so to to take a gander at it and test where he thinks testing is required.
Nobody has to sign for anything and nobody is going to be asked to sign for anything they don't want to. For starters I don't fancy giving any of them bastards down south any more of my hard earned, they already take 40% of any overtime i do already. so That'll be another 17.5% saved off the job ( hopefully- cash often brings out the bst in people i think).
My cable was installed in the proper manner, i followed 'suggested' guidlines that i found in various publications i've recently bought and read. My cable is laid on a bed of sand at 600mm depth, the SWA is further encased in 2" plastic waste pipe, overlaid with more sand, Storage heater fire bricks, two seperate layers of yellow 'buried electrical cable' warning tape, back filled with stone free soil and then paved over the top. I really don't think the special agent from building control is going to be too concerned do you ?
Perhaps some pictures might help sway him not to slap me in irons;
http://photos.imageevent.com/sidandcoke/generaldumpinggroundforgashpiccys/large/SG1L0926.JPG
http://photos.imageevent.com/sidandcoke/generaldumpinggroundforgashpiccys/large/SG1L0927.JPG
http://photos.imageevent.com/sidandcoke/generaldumpinggroundforgashpiccys/large/SG1L0929.JPG
http://photos.imageevent.com/sidandcoke/generaldumpinggroundforgashpiccys/large/SG1L0930.JPG
Back on topic:
I've decided to go with:
RCD side
Upstairs Ring B32A
Downstairs ring B32A
Cooker B32A ( it has a switched socket outlet on the isolator plate)
Non RCD side
Upstairs lights B6A
Downstairs lights B6A
Shed B32A ( i can add a MEM 100ma RCD pod to this if i wish to make it an RCBO)
This arrangement will leave me with 1 spare non RCD way and 3 spare RCD ways to add extra circuits in the future. I've heard that Fridge Freezers can sometimes be problematic and i also have a gas central heating combi- boiler to think of which is wired into the downstairs ring.
As always thanks for all the helpful and informative replies, i really do appreciate you taking the time to answer. [/url]
