I have been quoted £1345.00 plus VAT to replace a hot water cylinder and ch pump and install a y plan pack and ch header tank. Can anyone tell me if this sounds reasonable please??
Having done these sort of jobs in the past,seems a tad pricey.Do you know what time he has allowed to do the work?
No not yet, he has promised a breakdown by email sometime today. I priced up the tank and header tank at 200 quid or so from Screwfix plus another 150 for the pump. I guessed at 2 days work but maybe it's more time-consuming than I realise. This is Devon, not London... The problem is that we have a primatic system and it's stopped working properly. The tank has no integral lagging and is pretty corroded, so it seems a good idea to convert it to a more conventional system and go from there Hot water is fine but radiators are generally cold.
sounds pricey - I got a brand new Bosch/Worcester combi boiler fitted for £1400 (cash). depends if it is a vented or unvented cylinder. vented are around £200 to buy, and unvented about £1100. old-school cylinders are the former type and guessing it is a like for like, the plumber will probably get it for under 200. the bits should come to around £500 tops (inc VAT), so (s)he is allowing around 30 hours at around £30/hour - does that sound like a job that will take nearly 4 days to complete? just my 2p worth from experience (and lots of estimates, and assumptions, etc) Pete
Problem is he's taken a long time to give us a quote and proposes to start tomorrow or Thursday, so has us over a bit of a barrel, especially given the cold weather. He's done work for us in the past and we know he's good and his charges were reasonable then. I wonder if he's pricing it as a job he doesn't really want to do
It's getting warmer, tell 'er indoors to put a jumper on and it'll soon be +16C. personally, I would ask him to hang fire as you can't get your head around the pricing. see if there are any other plumbers locally that would do the job, or if there are any that would price up putting a new combi in instead. I reckon even British Gas would do a new boiler for around £2500, so a local could probably get it done for sub £2k which is only £400 more than you are looking at for a new tank and gubbins.
Sounds sensible, have to say. Do you mean a new boiler plus tank or a new combi boiler to eliminate the tank. Eliminating the tank would be quite a wrench as we have a large airing cupboard we use a lot- especially in winter.
eliminate the tank, create a bigger airing cupboard and run a couple of the central heating pipes bare through the bottom or side wall of the cupboard (will still get warm enough to air the towels, etc). you could probably fit a recently sprayed tank in there for drying once you've created the room (see, practical as ever!). you might even get £20 for the tank down the scrapyard (at least £3/kg).
biggest problem you have, and it is the same the country over, is to get a bloody tradesperson to turn up!
I had a combi in the last house. Great for instant hot water but if someone turns the hot water on while you are in the shower then it goes cold. Which can be a bit of a laugh
Round our way a Chap plus the Lad seem to charge £500-ish per day - so you don't seem too far off to me !
Plumbers are all too expensive , I work with them day in day out and they're a joke. I'm a been a self employed joiner for 40 years, can make almost anything out of wood and charge £18-50 an hour. Plumbers make my blood boil. Steve
My go to plumber serviced my boiler, changing a pump, last December and the labour charge was £71+vat per hour so it looks like your man is allowing 2 days for the job. Andy
As long as you retain sufficient physical flexibility to access all the stupidly confined and small spaces some other plumber decided to fit a crucial joint/component that is designed to fail, I’m not sure that there is an age restriction. Andy
