Sparkie materials prices

[gordonwindeyer]

Here is one outside our normal themes. I would appreciate some thoughts on the matter...
I have had some electrical work done recently and have no qualms about the $80 per hour labour charge. However I have taken exception to the prices I am being charged on materials.
I think I am being charged about 3 times what you can source the materials for without much effort. Here are some examples of the materials charges:


Standard double GPO $24 (which can be bought for less than $10)
2.5mm T&E $5 per metre (you buy a 100m reel for $100)
16A Residual Circuit Breaker $80 (you can buy them for $25)


So my bill for materials is $1,600 (this was for re-doing a kitchen, with no changes to lighting but effectively re-doing all the power). The labour bill is about $3k.
Because I figure he should have only charged me something like $600 for materials (based on the pricing sample above), I paid all his labour plus the $600 for materials and am in discussion about the additional $1k for materials.
He has sent me scans of the trade price lists to justify his prices.
But this guy has no interest in buying well for me because the higher the price he pays for his materials the better off he is.
I would be interested in anyone's thoughts.

Regards

Gordon

[switt775]

About 10 years ago I did a software installation for an electrical supplies wholesaler. They also did some over the counter sales to the public. To accommodate the two different markets, they had a "list price" which the public paid. Trade customers (sparkies) were given a percentage discount off list. The example which sticks in my mind is conduit. Trade price was 80% off list.

So don't take much notice of the list prices, he's likely paying much MUCH less.

[Grumpy John]

Before getting too worked up over prices make sure you're comparing apples for apples. Don't think you'll get Clipsal quality for an Arlec price, also any material sold/charged by the metre is going to be dearer than the roll price. As far as the discounts are concerned, these help offset the costs of carrying around thousands of dollars worth of cable, switches, conduit and all the other bits and pieces a sparkie needs to do his job.

[nrb]

This issue raises it's head from time to time,if tradies are doing their costings correctly their pricing to you should be based on "absorbed costings" ie. the total cost of time spent getting,holding,transport,etc and all the overheads any business has (you pay this cost no matter where or what you buy) It is often the reason that small businesses go under as they don't cover all their costs often they last a while then go broke.
Ask your tradie if you can buy materials for your job,I have owner built a couple of houses and found that most guys will work with you often saying go get your prices then i'll see what I can do.

[NCArcher]

Did you get a quote for the required work? Did you agree to pay the quoted price?
Now that the work is finished you have decided it is too expensive and are not going to pay.
If you didn't bother to get a quote then you should pay whatever the sparkie wants. If he refused to give you a quote then you should have sent him on his way and employed someone who will.

[Master Splinter]

Check against the prices here - Electrical Supplies, Online Electrical Wholesaler, Electrical Accessories, Electrical Wholesaler Brisbane, Electrical Wholesaler Sydney, Electrical Wholesaler Melbourne, (http://www.sparkydirect.com.au)

[Chesand]

Slightly off topic, I know, but if we are not legally allowed to do electrical work, why can we buy the fittings, cable, etc from any hardware store or in this case online.

[Grumpy John]

My understanding is that while a registered electrician is required for all new wiring installations, anyone can do a like for like replacement. If a light switch fails you can replace it with a similar switch, but cannot change it over for, say, a dimmer switch. Of course I could be 100% wrong about this. The rules are probably different from state to state just to complicate things further.

[Big Shed]

Slightly off topic, I know, but if we are not legally allowed to do electrical work, why can we buy the fittings, cable, etc from any hardware store or in this case online.

There is of course nothing to stop one buying the necessary materials and getting an electrician to do the installation.
I did exactly that when I built our house, he wasn't happy about it, so I gave him a list of the prices that I could buy the major items for and he agreed to match them.

He probably still bought much better than I could have but at least I had some control over what I was being charged, he probably still made some money, so we were both happy.

He also agreed to me working with him and doing the "donkey" work rather than bring an apprentice along.

Had the same arrangement with my roofer and plumber, worked out very well, I learned a fair bit and saved some money.

[petersemple]

I know somebody who saved a lot of money by wiring up a granny flat himself. What he told me is that it was entirely legal for him to do all the wiring, just not legal to connect any of that wiring into the switchboard. What he did then was do the wiring, and then paid a sparky to make the switchboard connection. The sparky of course checked all the wiring out before making the connection in the switchboard, but that was a lot cheaper than getting the sparky to actually do the wiring. For this to be cheaper though you would need to know what you were doing - or you would be paying for the sparky to redo all the mistakes.

[artme]

I did the same thing with my shed in Bris. Peter.
Passed with flying colours and saved a packet.

I find wiring of light and power circuits to be fairly simple.

[nev25]

My understanding is that while a registered electrician is required for all new wiring installations, anyone can do a like for like replacement. If a light switch fails you can replace it with a similar switch, but cannot change it over for, say, a dimmer switch. Of course I could be 100% wrong about this. The rules are probably different from state to state just to complicate things further.

Without getting me banned again for telling it how it is
Might I suggest contacting the regulatory Authority in you state to Verify what you can on can't do

Think you will be surprised as to how little one can do unlicensed

[Bushmiller]

Did you get a quote for the required work? Did you agree to pay the quoted price?
Now that the work is finished you have decided it is too expensive and are not going to pay.
If you didn't bother to get a quote then you should pay whatever the sparkie wants. If he refused to give you a quote then you should have sent him on his way and employed someone who will.


I think we are starting to stray a little from the original question (which is our right of course :wink:) but I think NC has pretty much sumarised it above.

With the widsom of hindsight I expect Gordon would approach his next job differently.

Just on the subject of what we can and can't do there is some confusion caused by whether you are connected to the grid (for electricity) and a town system (for plumbing). Also the restrictions seem to be becoming tighter and tighter.

When we built our house over twenty years ago we had to get permission to live in the shed while we built. A neighbour down the road a few years earlier was told by the council in response to his question,

"We don't care if you live in a chook shed."

This was in a rural environment. Needless to say it is no longer the case.

Regards
Paul

[Master Splinter]

My understanding is that while a registered electrician is required for all new wiring installations, anyone can do a like for like replacement. If a light switch fails you can replace it with a similar switch, but cannot change it over for, say, a dimmer switch. Of course I could be 100% wrong about this. The rules are probably different from state to state just to complicate things further.

The list of activities you are legally allowed to undertake in relation to mains wiring as a non-electrician, across all states and territories of Australia, follows:

#List starts#

Replace a blown light bulb
Put a new length of fuse wire in an old style pull out ceramic fuse block

#List ends#

To do any more than that (ie replace like for like) you need at the minimum a connect/disconnect license; typically these are only available to a select few related trades (plumbing, gasfitting, refrigeration mechanic) where you may need to replace a hot water system or similar hardwired device.

That said, here's a link to the NZ government's "How to do your own house wiring to AS/NZS standard" DIY guide -http://goo.gl/9d33T (PDF file).

NZ - despite sharing exactly the same set of rules and standards on electrical wiring as us - has allowed DIY electrical work since the late 90's, leaving Australia pretty much all by itself in the list of first world 'thou shalt not do thou own wiring' countries.

[A Duke]

The list of activities you are legally allowed to undertake in relation to mains wiring as a non-electrician, across all states and territories of Australia, follows:

#List starts#

Replace a blown light bulb
Put a new length of fuse wire in an old style pull out ceramic fuse block

#List ends#

To do any more than that (ie replace like for like) you need at the minimum a connect/disconnect license; typically these are only available to a select few related trades (plumbing, gasfitting, refrigeration mechanic) where you may need to replace a hot water system or similar hardwired device.

That said, here's a link to the NZ government's "How to do your own house wiring to AS/NZS standard" DIY guide -http://goo.gl/9d33T (PDF file).

NZ - despite sharing exactly the same set of rules and standards on electrical wiring as us - has allowed DIY electrical work since the late 90's, leaving Australia pretty much all by itself in the list of first world 'thou shalt not do thou own wiring' countries.
And many would have us in the 3rd world every one do your own thing situation.

[Master Splinter]

And many would have us in the 3rd world every one do your own thing situation.

I agree. New Zealand's electrocution rate really zoomed up the charts since they allowed DIY electrical work. Oh, wait, no it hasn't, it's pretty much where it had been before.

Like all those other lax countries that allow DIY electrical work - their electrocution rates have been significantly higher than Australia's...except for the fact that they've been consistently lower than Australia's. (I seem to recall some guy from Denmark(?) posting on this forum saying you could get a merit badge in the scouts for being able to do wiring)

Australia's high-by-international-standards electrocution rate didn't actually start to decline (2005-ish) until government/industry undertook specific advertising to: 1) Get crane drivers to look where they were swinging the crane boom and 2) Get sparkies to stop working on switchboards 'n stuff while the circuits are still live.

[A Duke]

I agree. New Zealand's electrocution rate really zoomed up the charts since they allowed DIY electrical work. Oh, wait, no it hasn't, it's pretty much where it had been before.

Like all those other lax countries that allow DIY electrical work - their electrocution rates have been significantly higher than Australia's...except for the fact that they've been consistently lower than Australia's. (I seem to recall some guy from Denmark(?) posting on this forum saying you could get a merit badge in the scouts for being able to do wiring)

Australia's high-by-international-standards electrocution rate didn't actually start to decline (2005-ish) until government/industry undertook specific advertising to: 1) Get crane drivers to look where they were swinging the crane boom and 2) Get sparkies to stop working on switchboards 'n stuff while the circuits are still live.
If you do not have electrical rules and training its like having no road rules and you can drive on which ever side of the road you like regardless of which country you are in.
For what it's worth I had my scouts Electricians badge at 12 and fitted my first plug top under my mother's super vision at 6. Them were the days and it wasn't in Australia either.

[Master Splinter]

Check the goo.gl link I posted a few replies ago.

It's a 50-odd page document that contains all the knowledge and information that the New Zealand electrical regulator requires NZ'ers to know so they can undertake their own electrical wiring. There's your officially sanctioned 'road rules and training' for simple domestic electrical work.

(and I'm happy to say that that goo.gl link has been accessed over 1,600 times since the middle of this year, so there are at least a few more Australians knowledgeable about DIY electrical wiring, even if they are not legally allowed to do it.)

[Schtoo]

Standard double GPO $24 (which can be bought for less than $10)
2.5mm T&E $5 per metre (you buy a 100m reel for $100)
16A Residual Circuit Breaker $80 (you can buy them for $25)




I don't know if this helps or hinders, but the last time I actually bought the stuff in your list they were $10 for Clipsal 2000 DGPO, $0.80 metre for standard 2.5 T&E and the residential CB I don't know.

However, my prices were piggy backed to my work, and we often bought enough stuff to make the manufacturers ask us to please give them some warning. I do know our cable was 80% off trade list, and bakelite was as cheap as anyone was getting for genuine Clipsal gear, and we wouldn't use anything else (unless we'd actually run Clipsal out of the stuff, then we'd use HPM).

I did some work with another sparky on the weekends, and he threatened to drag me into the wholesalers and have me put my name down while he cleaned the place out and paying cash so there was no loose ends. Our boss would let us buy anything under the company name, but if it was for us we just paid cash on the spot.

I suppose the point to consider here is that yes, it is possible to get pretty deep discounts on sparky stuff, but you've got to be going through a heck of a lot of gear to get those fabled 'cheap!' prices. The average guy with a van and a kid helping doesn't get stuff all that cheap, and if they do, likely it's cheap gear.

As far as you guys doing your own electrical work, unless you have an actual license, you can do as mentioned by Mr. Splinter, change a light bulb and re-wire a fuse. Otherwise you're not supposed to be touching it. I have no thoughts one way or the other (I do have a license, still!) but the fact you can buy electrical gear anywhere always kind of surprised me. If regular folk aren't supposed to be doing it, why can they buy the forbidden fruit so easily?

Just as a side note, I went into a wholesalers a few years ago, in plain clothes and asked for a box of outlets and some cable for some work my dad needed doing. They almost didn't serve me because I didn't look the part and they'd just stopped selling to the public because of some liability thing.

Just for what it's worth.

Stu.

[gordonwindeyer]

Thanks to all for you inputs.
NCArcher is right, we did seem to stray from the original question and I thank you for pointing that out.
However, NCArcher did also stray from what I originally said. I had not decided to not pay the asking price for the materials (although I had questioned it). Furthermore, because I didn't obtain a quote in the first place (I will most likely do so next time!), I do not think I am necessarily obliged to pay whatever is asked. That amounts to writing an open cheque!
If the electrician charged me $100 for the standard GPO fitting (which probably cost him $10), and his labour at $80 ph and the cable at $20 per metre etc, etc, I would definitely object.
Since no-one has really come up with comments which provide me with a worthwhile way of taking him to task over what I definitely regard as rip-off materials pricing, I have decided I am not going to have an argument over the $1k of what I regard as excessive markups. I have already paid him $3.6k and will now pay the extra amount.
That is after he checks what is suspect is a live, unterminated wire awaiting a final GPO once the kitchen work is completed. And, I will be getting another electrician to do the final (and further) work.
I know $80ph is market for this work, but I am not prepared to bulk that up by paying 3 times what the materials can be readily bought at. I regard that as a sneaky way of overcharging me.
Having said all that, again, thanks for all your comments.

Regards

Gordon

[nev25]

Check the goo.gl link I posted a few replies ago.

It's a 50-odd page document that contains all the knowledge and information that the New Zealand electrical regulator requires NZ'ers to know so they can undertake their own electrical wiring. There's your officially sanctioned 'road rules and training' for simple domestic electrical work.

(and I'm happy to say that that goo.gl link has been accessed over 1,600 times since the middle of this year, so there are at least a few more Australians knowledgeable about DIY electrical wiring, even if they are not legally allowed to do it.)

As much as I don't want to enter into this augment

If this DIY thing was to happen it would have to be right across the board
I mean all trades
As an electrical contractor and a "A"Grade electrician I recently rang up the Plumbers Industry Board (Victorians Plumbers Regulatory Authority) and asked if it was possible for me to get a roofing ticket as at time we have to remove a roof sheet or tiles as part of our work (In which we are suppose to get a plumber to do)
I even offered to do any course that was required.

The reply I got was
"If anyone can get such a license there would be no point in an Apprenticeship?????"

[nev25]

Thanks to all for you inputs.
NCArcher is right, we did seem to stray from the original question and I thank you for pointing that out.
However, NCArcher did also stray from what I originally said. I had not decided to not pay the asking price for the materials (although I had questioned it). Furthermore, because I didn't obtain a quote in the first place (I will most likely do so next time!), I do not think I am necessarily obliged to pay whatever is asked. That amounts to writing an open cheque!
If the electrician charged me $100 for the standard GPO fitting (which probably cost him $10), and his labour at $80 ph and the cable at $20 per metre etc, etc, I would definitely object.
Since no-one has really come up with comments which provide me with a worthwhile way of taking him to task over what I definitely regard as rip-off materials pricing, I have decided I am not going to have an argument over the $1k of what I regard as excessive markups. I have already paid him $3.6k and will now pay the extra amount.
That is after he checks what is suspect is a live, unterminated wire awaiting a final GPO once the kitchen work is completed. And, I will be getting another electrician to do the final (and further) work.
I know $80ph is market for this work, but I am not prepared to bulk that up by paying 3 times what the materials can be readily bought at. I regard that as a sneaky way of overcharging me.
Having said all that, again, thanks for all your comments.

Regards

Gordon



I'm wondering where you are getting your prices from
Not saying you are wrong but one thing to remember is at the end of the day a tradesman is responsible for what is installed
Install cheap crap (and there's a lot of it around) and it doesn't last long
Pay for the good stuff and it lasts (motor Mechanics are a classic example of this)

You pay for what you get

All trades mark up prices that's the advantage of buying trade
Just like shops buy Wholesale and sell retail

Not saying its right or wrong just how it is

[Cliff Rogers]

My understanding is that while a registered electrician is required for all new wiring installations, anyone can do a like for like replacement. If a light switch fails you can replace it with a similar switch, but cannot change it over for, say, a dimmer switch. Of course I could be 100% wrong about this. The rules are probably different from state to state just to complicate things further.

That is in Pomgolia & maybe NZ, not Oz.

You can do the work under the supervision/direction/instruction of a licenced person & have it inspected by them & then it is their neck that is on the line if anything goes wrong.

Insurance companies WILL check these things if there is a claim.

[Cliff Rogers]

Back to the original question... the price of the parts does seem a bit high.... even for the 'good' stuff.

It happens in other trades too, the most glaring one that I can think of is the price that mechanical service centres charge for oil that they buy in bulk HEAPS cheaper than what Joe Blogs can buy it for in small plastic containers at the supermarket yet the supermarket oil (same brand as the sticker they wack on the windscreen) is cheaper.

[Grumpy John]

Thanks to all who corrected my understanding of the wiring regs in Oz. I've obviously been watching too many Pommy reno shows on the Lifestyle Chanel :doh:.

[Bushmiller]

I did make the comment a while back in another thread that I believed Australia was over regulated. The reply was that we are the same as everybody else.

I don't think that is quite true.

Regards
Paul

[Master Splinter]

The reply was that we are the same as everybody else.

I don't think that is quite true.

Regards
Paul

It's most certainly not true, and the same old arguments (it makes everyone in Australia safer) have no evidence to support that base; in fact with tragedies like the insulation installation debacle you could say the lack of availability of information and instruction on mains wiring systems has actually lead to deaths.