What would you have quoted for this open-sided lean-to?

lardconcepts

If you were a skilled general builder in his mid-50's with years of experience, how long would you expect it to take to put this up?

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1K463gy87F0HaHioOx3DkeXDdsHO0nUblXKigBFPgeO4/edit

All the dimensions are in the image. If you can't see it for any reason, it's a 6.7 m2 corrugated plastic roof braced by 3 cross-timbers screwed to the wall at the top, braced against the other corner by 2 steel angles, and one 1.85m timber upright supported by a steel foot screwed into the existing concrete.

The job is:
1: Build framwork with novolux sheeting
2: Re-route guttering, fix new downpipe.

The bill of materials comes to a little more than I expected, but it all makes sense at £189.

So, on top of that... what would you expect labour to be?

ormus

i would expect to erect that in just the one day.
mabe a day & half max.

phill99

Day and a half is about right, but builders charge by the day, so allow 2 days for a builder and a 'lad'. so £400 - £500 max

lardconcepts

phill99 wrote: »

Day and a half is about right, but builders charge by the day, so allow 2 days for a builder and a 'lad'. so £400 - £500 max

That's kind of about what I was thinking. I was braced for £350-£375 as he's quite good, and being sparsely populated we don't have the "cash-in-hand" East European effect to drive prices down.

Before I tell you what the bill was....

We had a larger job done by him, fully quoted, for which we were satisfied with the bill, so I knew his rates.

During a cup of tea, I casually mentioned that I was thinking of putting a cover over the bin area to make a bit of storage, and he'd said "no problem, if you want me to do it, I can't do it this week but we'll measure it up, and pop back one day in a couple of weeks, it shouldn't take long".

Knowing anyway that it's a one-man one-day (maybe 2 days max) job, stupidly I didn't bother to get fully quoted on a minor addition to much larger work.

What I couldn't understand was why he had another person with him, and they must have made 3 trips to the builders, and took an inordinately long time to put the plastic roof on - I even offered to lend him my DeWalt drill/screwdriver. "We're alright, I prefer manual tools". Strange.

The bill came - he'd charged 2 people at 2 full days, a total of 32 hours at £17 an hour each (incidentally, £2 an hour more than the previous job), for a total labour of £544, job total of £733.

I literally can't afford that, and needless to say, I have no intention of paying that, but the plan is to invite him round to "talk me through" the time it took. Would you say these were fair timings for one person?

A hour to measure and plan.
90 minutes to pop to the local builders merchants.

There's 5 straights of timber cut to length by the timber yard so nothing else to do there;
Assemble frame and screw to wall/upright: 3 hours?

10 plugs into the wall to support the rear beam and brackets - an hour?

32 screw/caps to hold the Novolux sheeting in place - 2 hours?

4 bolts into concrete to hold the post backet - 15 mins?

Swap gutter stop ends and downpipe, reverse fall on 3 metres of guttering - 1 hour?

1+1.5+3+2+0.25+1 = 8.75 hours. I've worked that out to be 1 man - there were 2 of them.

No travel time - he's a close neighbour - 500 yards to travel.
Which is another reason I really need to be sure of my figures.

So 8.75*£17 = £148, add to £189 materials and that's £337, close to the £350 I'd assumed.

Any likely comebacks I should be aware of or questions I should ask?

robyn1991_2

Hmm...I think it would take longer than 15 minutes to do the bolts for the concrete brackets... How on earth did he do that without electric tools?

phill99

I think in fairness its a two man job. You need some one to jold large pieces of timber while you screw them into the wall etc, and corrugated sheets are really a teo man job, especially in the wind. However, its not 2 fully qualified tradesman-its a tradesman and a lad/labourer, so he can't charge £17/hour for a labourer. I would allow a day and a half, say at £25/hour combined for say 13 hours.

There is also an issue about going to builders merchants.

If you have seen a job and measured it and know what you need, then you are expected to turn up to the job with everything necessary to do the job. You can't charge customers for doing something you should have done at 8.00 in the morning. The time you spend doing that is reflected in the hourly rate you charge for time on site. You can only really charge for going to the builders merchants if the customer asks for something different or require additions etc.

It seems a lot to me and I think he will come down in price if he values your custom.

Russe11

I can't see how that has taken 2 workers more than a day, but then if have been using hand tools its a different matter.

But if you didn't get a quote then its a case of you have instructed the work to be done, so I can't really see how its unfair.

If it was me i'd of held the rate for a existing customer if they had been a good customer, paid promtly etc

Likely the best thing to do is have a polite word about the invoice you have been given, see what response you get.

You can then just pay the what you think the value of the work is if you don't reach a agreement. But then you might end up being turned down/overquoted on jobs in the future.

I can't see it worth while for the trades to chase you for the outstanding amount, but they could of course chase you for it through the court system and unless its a bad job(backed up by experts) or its a obvious case that you have been ripped off then its usually ruled in favor of the tradesman.

Final thought is you said they had done a good job in the past, but maybe they did not do very well on this job or others and are increasing their rates to try and cover "lost jobs" previously.(might not seem as fair, but quite common)

lardconcepts

What a horrible week that was - I've been stressing about it so much since I asked him to "pop round to discuss the timesheet" that I had that hot back-of-the-neck tension feeling. He just popped in, we had a chat about it, he admitted he'd put down 8 hours for one day instead of 7, and agreed that it probably didn't need 3 journeys to the builders merchants.

We thrashed it out a bit - quite clearly he wasn't going for the £500 I'd mentioned, so we ended up at £600. £133 off is better than a poke in the brown-eye, but still nearly £200 more than I'd have accepted a quote for. I couldn't really argue much more because he's lived here forever and knows literally everyone and when you're a relative newcomer to a small town, it's best not to !!!! off one of the oldest families. Not for a couple of hundred quid. Agree?

Lesson learnt - always get a quote, no matter for how small a job, or how well you think you know the builder.

And the most ironic thing of all? Every single year, I always spend nearly a day getting at least 4 car/house/contents quotes from not only the comparison sites but also companies not on those sites.
And then I go and lose a year of insurance savings on not getting a quote on a "quick" building job.

Lesson learnt...

oz0707

lardconcepts wrote: »

And the most ironic thing of all? Every single year, I always spend nearly a day getting at least 4 car/house/contents quotes from not only the comparison sites but also companies not on those sites.
And then I go and lose a year of insurance savings on not getting a quote on a "quick" building job.

Lesson learnt...

I never spend too much time trying to knock 5 quid off my gas bill. You end up being a busy fool.

lardconcepts

oz0707 wrote: »

I never spend too much time trying to knock 5 quid off my gas bill. You end up being a busy fool.

Me neither. That's why I don't do it, and stick to things like £300 off my electricity bill and £400 of car/home/contents etc

PasturesNew

I'd not trust that. I'd want to dig down 18-24" and set the upright into concrete. And I'd have a bracket on each wall to hold a horizontal to support the roof.

Once the wind gets whipping, as it's in the photo, I could see that disappearing up and over the roof late one January night.