What does a new boiler & installation cost in London?

[DP]

Polly1, was called out to a faulty boiler yesterday. This boiler was moved about a year ago when the house was extended. Couple of weeks ago the boiler started to malfunction. Service contractors were out several times to replace just about everything in sight and were in conference with everyone and his dog. Parts were replaced without cause (reasoning- could it be this, now let us try that).

When the boiler still failed to work, the flue system (nothing wrong with it) has been labeled as being incorrectly installed when boiler was relocated and they cleared out expecting the customer to get the flue repaired. Remember, the boiler has worked for nearly a year after the relocation.

The boiler works without a hitch in HW mode, but fails in CH mode, therefore, nothing wrong with the flue. You may well ask what above has to do with your plight. The service contractor is the national company that drives blue vans. Consider yourself lucky your hunk has managed to fix the fault during call one.

I have stopped doing boiler installs and 'QUOTE' for jobs blind (when the customer cannot specify what they want the quote for). In a lot of cases when the specification is presented, only the bottom figure is looked at. As such I am out of the competition

 

[Polly1]

Polly1, was called out to a faulty boiler yesterday. This boiler was moved about a year ago when the house was extended. Couple of weeks ago the boiler started to malfunction. Service contractors were out several times to replace just about everything in sight and were in conference with everyone and his dog. Parts were replaced without cause (reasoning- could it be this, now let us try that).

When the boiler still failed to work, the flue system (nothing wrong with it) has been labeled as being incorrectly installed when boiler was relocated and they cleared out expecting the customer to get the flue repaired. Remember, the boiler has worked for nearly a year after the relocation.

The boiler works without a hitch in HW mode, but fails in CH mode, therefore, nothing wrong with the flue. You may well ask what above has to do with your plight. The service contractor is the national company that drives blue vans. Consider yourself lucky your hunk has managed to fix the fault during call one.

I have stopped doing boiler installs and 'QUOTE' for jobs blind (when the customer cannot specify what they want the quote for). In a lot of cases when the specification is presented, only the bottom figure is looked at. As such I am out of the competition

So what was wrong with it then?

 

[namsag]

Polly seeing as you are such a concerned and thoughtful landlord whose customers appreciate your contingency plans etc.
I take it that it was the boiler in your own house that took 5 months to fix because such a great landlord would not leave a tenant in such a situation for that length of time.
Also do you adjust rent for the additional cost of electric heating as opposed to gas while you take as long as i takes you to find a cheap job.

Your original comment said BG will fix it and put you on contract.. You may well get this boiler fixed but i doubt they will take onto contract.

 

[gas4you]

There's a lot more parts and upgrading to do when replacing a boiler other than the boiler its self. Labour rate up to £300 + VAT /day and you have to allow for call backs and up to 2 years warranty.

Welcome to the real world If you want to pay peanuts then all you will get are monkeys to do the job for you

So basically, you guys are charging now, for me to call you back to rectify your faulty work?

Not faulty work, but boiler problems of faults caused by interfering landlords who meddle when they don't know what they're doing!

Anything you buy has a margin built in for warranty/faults

 

[Polly1]

Polly seeing as you are such a concerned and thoughtful landlord whose customers appreciate your contingency plans etc.
I take it that it was the boiler in your own house that took 5 months to fix because such a great landlord would not leave a tenant in such a situation for that length of time.
Also do you adjust rent for the additional cost of electric heating as opposed to gas while you take as long as i takes you to find a cheap job.

Your original comment said BG will fix it and put you on contract.. You may well get this boiler fixed but i doubt they will take onto contract.

Right you are, it was my own boiler that they took ages to fix and I was actually away for a lot of the time anyway, so I wasn't that bothered about it. I would never ever let my tenants suffer that level of inconvenience.

On the cost of electric heating, the tenants pay the bill and it isn't vastly more anyway. My responsibilty is to supply the facilities, not to concern myself with the cost of using the facilities and so far, the contingencies haven't needed to be used, because regardless of the contingency, I take the problems seriously when they come up. The contingencies aren't a way to get out of sorting the problem, they're a way to ensure the problem doesn't become a major hassle between me & my tenants.

How would you feel if you woke up for work on monday & the HW didn't work? ****ed off I guess. But if you could simply move to the bathroom with the electric shower and report the problem to the LL later in the day, you'd barely think about it.

 

[Polly1]

There's a lot more parts and upgrading to do when replacing a boiler other than the boiler its self. Labour rate up to £300 + VAT /day and you have to allow for call backs and up to 2 years warranty.

Welcome to the real world If you want to pay peanuts then all you will get are monkeys to do the job for you

So basically, you guys are charging now, for me to call you back to rectify your faulty work?

Not faulty work, but boiler problems of faults caused by interfering landlords who meddle when they don't know what they're doing!

Anything you buy has a margin built in for warranty/faults

With 6 gas combi boilers, an off-peak electric storage heating system, a wood fired system, you'd think I'd get a little credit for knowing a few things about how to operate a boiler & what to check to decide whether it was a system problem, a boiler problem, or a manufaturing problem.

That might be why I've never had to call an installer back for a fault.

 

[namsag]

How do you know the cost isn`t vastly more if the contingency has never been used.

 

[Polly1]

How do you know the cost isn`t vastly more if the contingency has never been used.

I used my own contingency for 5 months......

 

[Paul Barker]

How would you feel if you woke up for work on monday & the HW didn't work? p****d off I guess. But if you could simply move to the bathroom with the electric shower and report the problem to the LL later in the day, you'd barely think about it.

I wouldn't be phased, have spent many periods of time in my life when there was no hot water or a very poor system or we were too poor to heat the water.

People have to too easy these days, and have no patience.

I had an emergency call the other day at 6am.

"I don't know if you do a 24hr call out, but I have no hot water and I have two young children"

Incredible isn't it?

How long would these people ever survive a depression or a war?

 

[Polly1]

How would you feel if you woke up for work on monday & the HW didn't work? p****d off I guess. But if you could simply move to the bathroom with the electric shower and report the problem to the LL later in the day, you'd barely think about it.

I wouldn't be phased, have spent many periods of time in my life when there was no hot water or a very poor system or we were too poor to heat the water.

People have to too easy these days, and have no patience.

I had an emergency call the other day at 6am.

"I don't know if you do a 24hr call out, but I have no hot water and I have two young children"

Incredible isn't it?

How long would these people ever survive a depression or a war?

I completely agree with you, but the Housing Act 2004 put additional responsibilities on landlords like the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. For certain types of occupants, places without CH systems or a good alternative like storage heating, would be considered unfit for habitation. This takes no account of the fact that a place without heating might be more environmentally friendly, or that many tenants would turn off the heating anyway to avoid the bills.

To simply say it's unfit is wrong IMO. The market should be free to price less fit places lower & higher spec places higher. A very cheap place for example without heating, might make a very happy tenant with a radiator or two who can both save on rent and only use their own heating when they really want to.

Again that's the problem I have with plumbers and boiler changes. Because what I might get for my money is a little random, yet the price is on the table, I have difficulty seeing the value and differentiating between diferent providers.

 

[Softus]

We go hand-in-hand Softus, you plumbers and us LL's. If it weren't for the property boom, neither of us would be making it.

You couldn't be more wrong, although you're definitely getting more efficient at it.

For one thing, the property boom doesn't cause things to leak, corrode, fracture and simply wear out.

Secondly, when people move less, they renovate more, which still provides plumbing work.

In early 2005 I met the plumber (we're almost friends you know) who offered me a new boiler installation this week for £2,200 and things were tighter for him then, I personally believed it was because in late 2004 / early 2005, the property market in London was much slower, therefore less renovations going on and less work for plumbers. He basically asked me there in the street for work & asked me what I wanted to pay for a boiler installation so he could have the work!

I guess I'm lucky not to have to be that pathetic, or to have to advertise. But then the harder I work, and the more careful I am, the luckier I seem to get. Odd.

some stuff about being a landlord that belongs on a different forum, and maybe even a different planet.

:shrug:

expensive doesn't automatically mean good and cheap doesn't automatically mean bad.

This is the second wise and reasonable thing you've written.

With property, people have a better understand of what price differentiators indicate, because they can see what they'll be getting before shelling out.

But then you've negated it with this heap of nonsense. Just browse the forums to see what kind of problems house buyers discover only after moving in.

When I started this thread, I simply wanted to know what you guys were charging as in my experience, once you give too many jobs to the same person, they start upping the price, because you said yes last time, why wouldn't you this time?

If that's what happens to you, then it's more down to the attitude that you display here, which is neither trusting nor respectful. People who think like you do repel good tradesman, because the good ones can afford to choose their customers, so your range of choice is reduced to the bad ones.

But instead I seem to have hit a nerve and for the most part, received abuse for questioning the ability of so many plumbers (not all) to overcharge.

It's up to you whether or not you think you've hit a nerve, but really that's irrelevant. The bottom line is that you asked for something you had no right to, and then you were given it anyway, but you didn't accept it because it didn't fit your obscure idea of what a professional boiler replacement should entail.

If you continue to post nonsense, then I for one will continue to point it out to you, the motive being that it will help other readers who might otherwise be duped into thinking that your reasoning is either valid or correct. And it ain't.

 

[werewolf]

Question for Polly.How much should llords be making from their tenants? Curious as you think we are all robbing swines.

 

[Steady]

Poll- you sound very bitter and twisted against tradesmen and plumbers/heating installers in particular because of the prices some have quoted. Please be assured that you WILL NOT get a combi swap for £200 labour and I would caution you strongly against using someone offering to do it for that price.
You have rightly cited BG as offering a seemingly competetive deal with their service contract but they are also the reason why you have come on here in the first place- because their installations cost SO MUCH. They charge this amount because they offer a decent after sales back-up- You are paying for this in the installation costs. That said ,their prices for installation work are still hugely inflated.
I would doubt that most reputable independent installers are charging you more than £250/ £300 per day plus a mark up on materials for their work. I and thousands of others think that this is a fair price given the skills involved and the cost of overheads.
If you do not like the prices quoted then you are perfectly entitled to have a go at doing it yourself -it is ,after all, only a day's work. And it's only really a matter of joining a few pipes together...

 

[ChrisR]

that's the problem I have with plumbers and boiler changes. Because what I might get for my money is a little random, yet the price is on the table, I have difficulty seeing the value and differentiating between diferent providers.

Well you've been educated in this post by Gasguru and others as to what the difference IS between a one day throw-it-in boiler change and the job done reasonably well. It isn't difficult to ask for the key points to be covered, in the quote, and checked afterwards. Many people assume all plumbers are the same and therefore look for the cheapest. They desrve the lowest quality.

Don't kid yourself that plumbers need landlords. Using the same all-tarring brush that you do, landlords are looking for rubbish.
But I do work for several landlords, who DO see the differences and pay a reasonable price for a reasonable job, by someone who appreciates that the landlord is in it to earn a living but also needs reliability.

Mutual respect, and that old-fashioned thing integrity go a very long way.

 

[namsag]

As Polly is in london could Agile not nip round and see them and have a bullsh#t talking contest. It would be some battle.