Day rate

[JulianC]

it could be anything,but being s/e you can claim most of it back,150 a day is not poverty what ever you do.

You're making assumptions. Self-employed one man band with a van and a bag of tools? £150 a day lovely jubbly. Or limited company, with overheads, premises, staff and a not unreasonable desire for growth? Probably not much, if any, of your £150 left to pay yourself a wage. There is a significant difference. Don't assume your own circumstances apply to everyone else.

 

[Earthstore]

As I posted, it does not comply with MCS rules, so no FIT payments, simple as that.

Also system design can be critical to make a system work properly, in most cases you can not just buy some panels and an inverter, plug it in and away you go.

I remember there being a problem with Sanyo/SMA, and I also remember who worked out what to do to rectify this.
Your £150 man for a day will doubtfully have this type of knowledge, there is a new post just come on here about cable runs to a SB1200, many of us know the answer, and the problems if you get it wrong.
Why not hire out plasterers for £150 a day, that is easy, slap the pink stuff on the wall, job done..,

 

[alarm man]

You're making assumptions. Self-employed one man band with a van and a bag of tools? £150 a day lovely jubbly. Or limited company, with overheads, premises, staff and a not unreasonable desire for growth? Probably not much, if any, of your £150 left to pay yourself a wage. There is a significant difference. Don't assume your own circumstances apply to everyone else.

he was talking abourt s/e day rate,most se dont have premises and staff,the fact is 150 a day is worth more being s/e than paye,its certainly not poverty either way

 

[Gavin A]

it could be anything,but being s/e you can claim most of it back,150 a day is not poverty what ever you do.

you can't claim it back, you can offset it against tax, which is different. It still all comes out of that £150 before you get to pay the rent, put food on the table etc.

at that rate you'd need to do 7-8 jobs to cover your liability insurance, 5-6 more for your MCS, CPS, 10-15 more for your van insurance, 10-15 jobs to cover repairs an depreciation on the van, 4-5 jobs to replace / repair / update tools etc.

so if you were able to do 5 days a week on site that'd be in the region of 10 weeks of work just to cover your basic costs, significantly more if you want an office / workshop. But you'd not get 5 days a week on site all year, nothing like it in this market, where there's effectively only installation work in the month or 2 before a cut, then a month of no work etc.

as I said, poverty wages IMO if you're only getting paid it as a day rate on a job by job basis unless maybe someones going to guarantee you 3-4 days a week at it, and even then it's not great for self employed using your own tools / van etc.

 

[jason121]

You cannot install PV for S/E wages only work for a company to gain S/E wages, MCS is to complex,

 

[alarm man]

you can't claim it back, you can offset it against tax, which is different. It still all comes out of that £150 before you get to pay the rent, put food on the table etc.

at that rate you'd need to do 7-8 jobs to cover your liability insurance, 5-6 more for your MCS, CPS, 10-15 more for your van insurance, 10-15 jobs to cover repairs an depreciation on the van, 4-5 jobs to replace / repair / update tools etc.

so if you were able to do 5 days a week on site that'd be in the region of 10 weeks of work just to cover your basic costs, significantly more if you want an office / workshop. But you'd not get 5 days a week on site all year, nothing like it in this market, where there's effectively only installation work in the month or 2 before a cut, then a month of no work etc.

as I said, poverty wages IMO if you're only getting paid it as a day rate on a job by job basis unless maybe someones going to guarantee you 3-4 days a week at it, and even then it's not great for self employed using your own tools / van etc.

that may be so,but 150 a day s/e is worth more tham 150 a day paye,that fact that 150 a day either way is poverty might be strange to someone that cant put food on the table..

 

[jason121]

what about the N/I
will have to put some side when retire, Not limited company any major problems could loose your home

 

[Gavin A]

that may be so,but 150 a day s/e is worth more tham 150 a day paye,that fact that 150 a day either way is poverty might be strange to someone that cant put food on the table..

sorry, but this is utter rubbish.

someone on PAYE, the employer has to pay their liability insurance, tools, MCS & CPS registration etc etc.

basically their take home pay would be £150 minus tax and NI.

someone who's self employed would have to cover all those costs, and then pay tax and NI on the remainder, and then what's left would be their take home pay, which will obviously be less than the person on PAYE.

 

[SolarCity]

I'm not claiming to offer anything, I'm sure every PV installer on here is the bee's knees, but I've been reading despite that, some are getting just 1 enquiry a week, so just cannot be busy

You're right. There isn't a lot of work out there. Believe me, what this industry doesn't need is more salesmen getting involved and making things worse.

Salesmen have utterly ruined this industry.

 

[Jaytbaez]

it could be anything,but being s/e you can claim most of it back,150 a day is not poverty what ever you do.

I agree, £150 a day seems fair to me, especially as it is profit, as its an agency rate, so they have found the work, but I'm really trying to get a handle on what installers would accept, seems £150 isn't enough for most, but coming from an agency/recruitment background, £150 a day certainly is acceptable for alot of trades/professions in my experience.

 

[Jaytbaez]

You're right. There isn't a lot of work out there. Believe me, what this industry doesn't need is more salesmen getting involved and making things worse.

Salesmen have utterly ruined this industry.

Please explain, as the salesperson who works for my friend, has a remit to get jobs, thats his role, his boss, my friend the PV Director, is more than happy with that?
And more than more than happy when that job is a £10k quote ofr a 4k install or more, 12k was his norm, now its down to 8k, etc etc.
How is it sales peoples fault? Surely its the owners of the install companies that set their install prices?

 

[Jaytbaez]

sorry, but this is utter rubbish.

someone on PAYE, the employer has to pay their liability insurance, tools, MCS & CPS registration etc etc.

basically their take home pay would be £150 minus tax and NI.

someone who's self employed would have to cover all those costs, and then pay tax and NI on the remainder, and then what's left would be their take home pay, which will obviously be less than the person on PAYE.

Ok Gavin, so the idea od a day rate for installers who havn't alot on, in the same way most other trades do day work sometimes, that's not the issue? its the £150 a day? So would £200 a day be better? I'm really just after some opinion on would installers with nothing else on in a week, do a couple of days work, free-lance/day rate for an agency, same as sparkys, brickys, plasterers do. Thats all.

 

[Jaytbaez]

what about the N/I
will have to put some side when retire, Not limited company any major problems could loose your home

Yep, too right, as with all S/E people, they are responsible for that.

 

[Jaytbaez]

You're making assumptions. Self-employed one man band with a van and a bag of tools? £150 a day lovely jubbly. Or limited company, with overheads, premises, staff and a not unreasonable desire for growth? Probably not much, if any, of your £150 left to pay yourself a wage. There is a significant difference. Don't assume your own circumstances apply to everyone else.

No, that is very true and I accept that, so coming from an agency stand point, that could/would be reflected. If you are a one man band, then £150 would seem fair, if you are a company then that is different, but as an agency, maybe they would only be looking for install guys with good knowledge, but low overheads, because they could be more flexible anyways.

 

[Jaytbaez]

You cannot install PV for S/E wages only work for a company to gain S/E wages, MCS is to complex,

I am seeing that Jason, so what if the company was an agency? Set up by MCS qualified people, and they would hold that cert?

 

[SRE]

So let's get this right ....

Earthstore has told you it doesn't meet MCS criteria and so it's not legal,
SolarCity, Gavin A, Julian C, Jason and many others have told you it's not financially viable for an installer
You don't understand the basics of being self employed and associated costs
You seem to struggle to get your head round the concept of sales people getting 1k for bullying people into buying excessively priced systems being morally wrong (it's ok for your Director mate to make £1 million from them but not ok for installers to ask for a decent living wage a bit of profit to see you through the one month in 3 where there's no work.)

From my 60ft yacht in the Caribbean earned by ripping off all my customers last year, it looks to me as though you're going down the right route and I'll look forward to meeting up with you over here when you too have made a fortune on £150 a day.

 

[drew35]

I think you should all sit at home holding out for £200 plus per day, while you're on the sofa watching Loose women I'll be out there taking that £150 all day everyday. And as for overheads, do you mean the couple of quid a day averaged out over a year? Which we get to claim tax allowance on, unlike every other PAYE worker in the country! Or the tools I bought twenty years ago? We're Electricians not brain surgeons, if you want big money get a big education. To use a nineties expression, "live in the now"!

 

[jason121]

Are you an Approved Installer with NICEIC .
MCS and Real
Do you own Test instruments
Insurances
Spend every other day in office doing paperwork
Account Fees
Put money aside for repairs to van
Think about future when its quiet
Retirement fund

 

[RISElectrical]

I think you should all sit at home holding out for £200 plus per day, while you're on the sofa watching Loose women I'll be out there taking that £150 all day everyday. And as for overheads, do you mean the couple of quid a day averaged out over a year? Which we get to claim tax allowance on, unlike every other PAYE worker in the country! Or the tools I bought twenty years ago? We're Electricians not brain surgeons, if you want big money get a big education. To use a nineties expression, "live in the now"!

This is the difference between being a spark and a business man essentially and by this I mean no offence.

Taking the £150 a day is fine, gives you a living and maybe £100-£120 in your hand at the end of it. This is great. However imagine you do this for 10 years, you wont grow in a business sense this way. When do you do the paperwork? at night times? If thats the case your hourly rate has just dropped to take this into account. There will come a day that the 10 year old tools need updating, the van needs replacing etc etc etc etc.

If you can get your overheads to a few quid a day then either (a) you have no overheads (b) your overheads arent sufficient to reflect the works you do or (c) your not accounting realistically and will in the future have a huge all at once overhead, I.E. new van.

 

[jason121]

£150.00 is only good if sub-contract and manage to work a 10hr day,
At the end of the day go home and put your feet up