For what its worth mate I was in this position about a year ago.
After Nine YEARS working for a company and after doing all my Quals the 4 YEAR NVQ route i was made redundant, now i was offered a couple of positions but decided i was gonna go on my own and my advice to you is GET WITH A GOOD COMPANY.
Yeah sure i made some good money at the time but on several occasions i would come up against problems that i had no idea how to solve.
Now i have worked on thousands of boilers and systems yet i still go to houses where i have never seen the set up or boiler before yet you only need 30 or so items for your portfolio so you have no chance of making it.
In the end i was asking more questions every day to my father in law who has his own succesful company (And willing to help me) than was healthy and realised that i still was not experienced enough to go it alone.
I now more than happily work for a well established local company who pay me a good wage, they use the things im good at to their advantage (installing) and teach me the other things on my travels.
Please listen to the guys on here if you ask for their advice as they have forgotten more than me and you know.
What happens if you get called to a job where the customer wants a back boiler out and combi with vertical flue in and you quote and win said job. Do you honestly beleive you could do it as i could not until last week.
And how is your fault finding?
Im off to a job tommorow to a ravenheat combi with no hot water or heating, now your as blind as i am at the minute as i have not been to the job yet but what do you think the problem may be?
As for your other Subject do you really think you could ask for much more than minimum wage at this moment?
It was 4 Years before i fitted my first boiler do you think you could do it already to a tradesmans standard?
I now earn more than £25k p/y + van and fuel etc + phone but the more experienced guys who at the mo can go to any job get more.
Out of curiosity what do you think you should be earning?
Im not disrespecting or having a go at you but just being honest, the problem is in this industry MUD STICKS and if you get covered in it you may not even find PAYE Employ never mind your own work.
most sensible balanced opinion i have read on this now boring post,
by the way if the OP earned £80k last year why the f**k would you give that up to go and do ACS, cause there are not too many domestic gas engineers straight out of training earning any more than 25% of that