Burning unseasoned Wood

Greenfires

You need to put your prices up mate! People may moan about the cost of having a mechanic look at their car - but they always pay up - and I'll bet you'll be looking at £50/hour plus just to have a gander at it! I know there are cheaper sweeps round here, and there are pricier ones too - but I honestly don't think I've ever lost a booking on price - many people tell me they were expecting it to be a lot more. My prices start at £35 and go up from there - if I'm doing more than one chimney in the same house I'll knock a bit off - but I won't do three times the work for 10% extra!

It's very easy to be a "busy fool" I think the term is. People have to realise that if they want a service then they have to pay for it - they have nothing to gain by you going out of business or bust if they need the service you provide. I used to have this out with a guy who worked on my vans at one time - he was a grand bloke but if he thought his bill sounded too much, he'd knock a load off it! Great you might think - but the way I looked at it was that he did a good job and he was useful to me - so I wanted him to stay in business. So I used to insist on paying him the proper amount instead of something that would hardly cover his costs never mind any profit.

Proper chimney sweeping gear isn't cheap either - and doesn't last forever. At the end of the day you're offering a service that could save their lives or prevent their house from burning down - and £25 doesn't seem much - they'd pay their window cleaner a sight more than that over the course of a year!

Have you seen the chimney sweeps forum by the way mate - don't think I'm allowed to post links but I'll pm you the site if you like.

Cheers for now

Andy

make_life_easier

Have just rang a chimney sweeper from liverpool and he said he would charge me £38 thats £21 difference am going to cancel the one I booked earlier and book him tomorrow - Thanx guy's for sharing your information as I didn't have a clue how much it really was.

make_life_easier

I alway tip anyone who does a good job for me, so an extra fiver will cover the cost of his petrol and this guy who is cheaper could do it straight away - the other company, I had to wait until november and I might want to use my fire before them - I am happy with this

muckybutt

Greenfires wrote: »

Have you seen the chimney sweeps forum by the way mate - don't think I'm allowed to post links but I'll pm you the site if you like.

Cheers for now

Andy

Yeah im aware of it Andy cheers.... broke my nest hook and a rod today....bloody birds !!!!

highrisklowreturn

My installer offered to put a cowl in but told him sod they boost the calorfic value of the fire.

Greenfires

Haha - I'm sure we could share some bird stories mate! Ironically the village where I have the most nest jobs is famous for hosting an annual scarecrow festival!

I think the sweeps forum needs to do some work on making itself a bit more visible on the net - I received an invitation to join and did so - as all the other forums are American and lots of their stuff isn't so relevant to us. So it was nice to find someone starting a UK forum. It needs some SEO work though as it would be hard to find otherwise - it doesn't show up in the first three pages of a google search, and I don't often go any further than that! The tree surgery/firewood/forestry forum I use always seems to be right at the top of the listings though so maybe the sweeps should take a few lessons!

Don't want to be scaremongering - but most of us sweeps are flat out at this time of year - is there a reason this guy can fit you in straight away I wonder?! If he turns up in his family car with the wife's Henry and a B&Q "my first chimney sweep set" - maybe your money would have been better spent elsewhere!

Andy

Greenfires

highrisklowreturn wrote: »

My installer offered to put a cowl in but told him sod they boost the calorfic value of the fire.

Sorry - don't understand a word of that!

highrisklowreturn

He wanted to put a cowl in to get the birds out. I told him I'd rather scorch them in my chimney.

Greenfires

You are more likely to gas yourself than scorch the birds. And most of us sweeps charge extra for clearing nests! And if customers have repeated problems with nests - as birds often come back to the same chimney - and said customer refuses advice to have a nest guard fitted, then they get charged extra on top!

The other possibility - if we're still assuming you have no register plate - is that the whole bunch of nest material will catch light, shrink slightly and then the whole bonfire will come down your chimney in one big lump and end up half way across the carpet. But I guess you don't really need our advice eh?!

highrisklowreturn

True I don't.