Chemi Its good to hear that your not a cheap date. C.D.
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Chemi Its good to hear that your not a cheap date. C.D.
I had the same problem last year, customer reported a burning smell from his blast chiller. I switched it on and smoke and small flames issued from behind the panel. New touch panel and board were over £700. Like you I fitted the Dixcell XB750 (mustn`t get mixed up with the CB750, first of the Japanese superbikes, lots more fun though). It took a while to wade theough the manual with all those options. Works like a dream now.
[QUOTE=glenn1340;223145] New touch panel and board were over £700. QUOTE]
They asked for..................£ 3400!!!!!
I took only £1000.
Went on the roof at -10 to see why the solar system wasn't working. Squirrels ate through the wires. Fixed it up and went to picked up a York 4 ton HP. Gonna turn it from a "monobloc" to a split system, everything else but the evap and fan goes inside. fun, fun, fun.
Rolled about the workshop, ducked and dived falling parts, but I am lucky, my thoughts to the families who lost loved ones.
Tragic event today in New Zealand!! I was travelling to my next job when i heard that Christchurch had suffered another earthquake. The radio was full on with real time interviews. Arrived onsite and the TV coverage was dramatic to say the least. In Queensland, we've been blown away and drowned but as Mad says, our thoughts go to the families who have lost loved ones..... Mike.
Even as a kid in NZ we practiced ducking under the desk for "the earthquake drill". But I look at my astro calendar and it is forecaste for the earth quake with a supermoon this month but watch out for next month as there is an extreme supermoon! there was a supermoon last september too. I would be edging my bets on gold (solid stuff) for the next two months as these extreme weather and quake conditions are common with the moon. In history when we have extreme weather/quake conditions men get a little agitated and conflict occurs. But the news still shocks me (even watery eyes) and my heart and thoughts go out to those who have lost today. My family lives in Wellington where we always/often talk about the big one to come.
Peace to all.
my thoughts and prayers go out to those that have lost lives and / or family. sad news indeed.
Apparently I evicted tenants.
Anyone else done that?
I think from memory I've done it a few times before. Tenants moving out because the a/c has been broken for 10 days or so.
I do a lot of work for real estate agents or private landlords, only happened 6 times out of ~1500 jobs, most tenants have waited 2 weeks or more and not moved out.
Waiting for the daikin PCB I ordered on the 18th in this case.
Warranty customers and tenants are the most demanding customers...
Usual huge amount of phone calls for me, went ballistic between 9-10am, started ramping up again at 4.45 (big rush again usually between 5-6pm), but I had enough and turned my phone off at 5pm. I normally get phone calls from 7.30am to 7.30pm, but the hot weather, hot forecast for the next week (35-38C) just made today crazy. Trying to remove all advertising I may have out there.
Bad day.
Spent the last 3 days in the office doing drawings for the new contract.....
Rather be out there getting down and dirty...
Re wired a milk tank control box that had caught fire, with flames and everything! Tested the wash system after and found dump valve leaking, replaced. Trip to gloucester RPW to get new motor, you'd think in this day and age they'd have a coffee machine :p
Called in at another customer who had called saying their acid/alkali knob was broken and had ordered a replacement, found it had fallen off as the switch had rusted through! so needs new switch....
Drove about like a tw@t as everyone seems to have been anoying me today :eek::o
Spent a lot of time clearing slime & unblocking drains on counter fridges. Found the chef and asked which one had the water leaking, he said all of them - eeeww:eek: I'm glad I've got a gallo gun.
Sadly today went to the funeral of a work mate who succumbed to the Big C last year.
He was a lovely man who will be missed but I was heartened by the fact that even some of the wholesalers that he used to frequent also came to pay their respects. Now that's a man who made happy contacts.
We will remember his happy times and move forward.
Well.. what a crazy day Friday was. Local pub had 3 coldrooms go down, and all were run by one compressor. These are kitchen room(food), keg room(storage) and front bar under counter 4 door. Who decided to run this combination?:rolleyes: !! All pipework disappears through the floor and snakes it's way under the building with a grapevine of obselete copper pipework..Great. One 3/8 liquid line split into 3 times 3/8 lines to feed the evaps and the nightmare continued on :confused:.A pretty, young U.K. girl was the bar attendant who had to step over me while i was working on the under counter chiller. Sort of... took my time... on that part of the job:o:D.. Mike.
P.M sent. Sorry to hear of the loss of fellow Mechanic/engineer, Brian.
Mike, no apologies required but thanks all the same.
I look on the bright side, he is out of pain, and he is remembered as a great guy.
I was thinking back to a recent boiler service that I did which was a right pain. Reading the previous log book entries was one of his which read, bearing in mind that he had been there previously ( annual service only ), - "Deep cleaned this **** boiler, got suckered into this once again. I'm standing back next time."
I love a sense of humour.
Crazy day, about 100+ phone calls, of them about 60 I couldn't answer, of those 24 voice messages (even though my message left when not answering says booked out for 3 weeks to discourage people leaving messages. Before I did that it was 100% of people leaving messages and took an hour on the phone to hear them all, so I'd rather not so many messages).
Damn busiest time on the phone ever, what the hell? Lost about 2 hours dealing with phone calls.
Going back to Feb 2008, I think I had 5 jobs for the month back then! But it's ridiculous now, I just want to look after my regulars and the contracts I have, but flooded by everyone.
Looked at expanding, but I'd need commercial premises to do that, and it's AU 30-50K a year to lease a terrible unit in a commercial estate near me, let alone employee costs. I don't make that much profit as it is, could maybe with extra help/employee, bu impossible to get that kind on money upfront. So I'd rather not get the extra phone calls/customers at this stage as I can't deal with it alone (and I HATE phones really).
Spent a couple of hours helping our friends sort out the carnage after this
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...DSCN1009-1.jpg
Hit me side on as I was negotiating a right hand turn into a side road
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...n/DSCN1015.jpg
And to top it all, I've got to produce my documents within 7 days ......or else.:rolleyes:
Ouch Frank! New van time!
I hope no one was injured.
A friend of mine, now retired, was a life long lorry driver and has a dislike of the boys in blue. One of his favourite tales is of the time he was driving a lowloader with a dozer on the back, police car tried to squeeze through but caught on the blade and opened the whole side of the car up like a tin of sardines! No injuries. He had all the over width plates etc on so the couldn't touch him for it.
I had a busy day too Paul, i had two phone calls :D
Yeh Frank, its the initial shock of having this happen, then the greater shock of how long vehicle will be out of service:eek:. I couldn't have this happen so i have 2 vehicles, my old (1995) ute and the current one. Strange thing is, when i'm in the (owes me nothing) ute, all road users avoid me but my current 3 yr old acts as a magnet for anything and everything... Paul h,... you have to look at it this way, either, you are excellent at your job and word has spread, or no-one else could be bothered doing your line of work, and.. word has spread. Find one or two others that can help you out. I've met trade assistants that can pull their weight, so to speak... Mike.
Frank,
So are they gonna book you for that?
Lawrie
No, I'm not at fault, but if I don't provide my doc's to the Plod Station, I could be done for not complying with the 'Producer' (for our friends across the pond - a document issued by the police)
I was told yesterday by my Insurance company that I may have to foot the repair costs myself (or on my insurance and lose the No Claims) as the Police are apparently blameless in cases like this if they are on a response to a 999 call!! Go figure that one out???
Frank
Ask your insurer to investigate CCTV as we had a similar case whereby one of our vans got T boned coming off a roundabout.. Didn't help us as there wasn't any but our insurers said they would investigate CCTV to look for evidence against the other driver..We ended up 'knock for knock' :-(
All three probably, but thats not why so many randoms calling me. That's probably because I put a basic web page up (very basic), and tried to get it prominent.
Am I cheap, maybe, probably not though, charge just enough for some people to complain about the price. Was au$60 call out, and $80 per/hr, both plus 10% GST tax. So first hour $154 inc tax. Minimum $88 for call out and 15min labour, most jobs are only 1/2 hr though so $110 because I'm bloddy quick and know what I'm doing most of the time (swampies - evap coolers, and daikins do slow me though)
Raised prices for new customers to $70 call out and $100/hr + tax. Is that cheap for the UK? au$1 is 60p isn't it?
Old prices are kept for the old, big regular customers for now though (price change was 01/02/2011)
I'm also the main service agent of two brands of a/c and fridge in perth as well. Gets me some work when it's not a heatwave, ie spring and autumn.
No one else bothering to do the work I do, yes very likely, that's why I have a lot of regular customers.
Many a/c companies just quote to replace if a unit breaks down, while I fix it. It's a bit of a balance though to know when it should be replaced I'm getting better at that. But a lot out there with diagnose your compressor stuffed and you're better of replacing it, when it's just the capacitor. Or quote to replace your ducted system if the controller is stuffed (while I can get it going with a new controller like I posted in another thread).
Again though, my pricing and repair ability has got nothing to do with this huge influx of phone calls, hundreds of randoms ringing around as there is a lot of work here for people that repair domestic or small commercial a/c, most people in my line of work don't have much advertising (mainly installers or commercial/industrial companies do all the advertising).
Today i fitted a 10kw fan on a beer fridge for £60. Only my second solo job and didn't know what to charge. Felt guilty as I felt as though i was over charging.But it's all part of business I guess.
Seems about right depending on how far you had to travel and how long it took to fit, don't forget all the crimps and terminal blocks etc you may have used and any cleaner used for the fan blade and even any disposeable glove you may have worn if it was a dirty unit. These things all add up very quickly and if you don't allow for them in your pricing it comes our of your pocket... (i'm assuming you meant 10watt and not 10Kw)
If you are just starting out, best have a sit down and work out a pricing structure, and review it often to see how profitable your company is, and tweak it as needs be.
Jon :)
whats up with it the wiring can be a little unsettleing at timesif not use to them
together with my boss troubleshoot a japanese Blast Freezer..... even though we cant read japanese heheehh... but stil able to solve it.
Been back out to a customer against my better judgement as it took them over a year to pay last time....
And just to prove that the gods were smiling on me today when i was there i fell over in the cow yard. Not your normal falling over mind but the sort where you go horizontal while airbourn and then hit the ground like a sack of sh!t, which as it happens is exactly what i ended up looking like :o
Jon :D
Quoted a job on the spot £two bags of sand + the Vodka...............only to be told I had got the gig and the next nearest price was £4200 + Vat...........WTF have I missed???
Eggs
Helped some of the other guys dismantle and remove a solar water pre-heating system that has only been installed for about two years. Mind you the install was crap and the gas fired heaters did most of the work anyway.
Tomorrow I'm meeting with the clients Carbon Reduction person about reducing their footprint with the AC on another site. Go figure. :D
I recently installed a bmt and cond unit a customer had bought, took about a week, for 2.1k, while doing this found out previous company last year charged 3.8k to change a 3hp scroll, badly...
Then on the other hand one of my competitors recently quote £350 fitted for a water pump when the genuine part cost me £440 from the uk agent????
Gets you so you don't know which way to turn :o
Eggs is thinking???.....???.......???.."If anyone would like to set up a cartel to narrow the gap between our small company prices and them of the big boys.......mail me on my yet to be disclosed super secret e-mail address.
The job I mentioned earlier was essentially a back to back Tosh DI WM, 6.8kw. Straight swap out.
It reminded me of a job I did as a labour only subbie a few years ago. Two 10k wall mounts and two 10 kw ducted units, all Daikin.
NHS paid £27k.
If I had done the job direct I would have charged about £14-15K.........Where TF did the other £13k go? The salesman's M3, the director's Portuguese villa ????
Jeeeeeez, one day I will learn the art.
**Edit**
Come to think of it the NHS must have paid more. I probably got about £2k labour only, the a/c contractor charged the M&E contractor £27k then they will have put their mark-up on.
The mind boggles??
Eggs
Yeh Eggs... have to be careful as what goes around comes around. Done myself out by not including parts or charging all the hours in the invoice supplied to customer. Charge too much and someone, sooner or later will find out and spread the word. (Psssst, don't get Eggs, he's too expensive!). So what did you miss on the "vodka" job?:eek:
It's hit and miss for me, so I would subscribe to you super secret email newsletter.
Sometimes too cheap. Sometimes I quote a job based on the same rates and told too expensive.
Doesn't really matter to me, quote what's fair to yourself, if you are cheap compared to the competition it doesn't matter, you are not being ripped off.
If told you ask too much, too bad, you're not willing to work for less good luck to others that are.
Also best to find regular customers that trust you and just ask for stuff to be done (quote up front though as usual and just say yes or no), rather than run around to the whim of blow in random people shopping around for 10+ quotes.
Of course the regulars will look elsewhere if they hear that they've been charged too much by you, but if your prices are fair that won't happen.
So just look after yourself, try to avoid getting up there in the rip off big leagues, or down there with the cheap split bashers that spend all their time 'winning' jobs by the random one off customers shopping around for rock bottom prices.