Paying an electrician - fair price

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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I have a friend who is an electrician. He's been helping out with re-wiring the kitchen, fitting a new consumer unit, adding a few new sockets. All in all he's probably done 2 days worth of work.

I've paid for all the materials and kit but haven't given him anything for the labour side of things. I asked him how much he wants but he said there's no need. I'm not happy with this as this is more than just an odd favour so want to pay him more than a bit of beer money like we'd normally do for each other.

I have no idea what sort of charge I'd be looking at if this was a normal sparky. Any suggestions on what would be a fair amount for 2 days work?
 
My dad is qualified and often says the same.

If it's the weekend, I buy him a few beers that night. If it's a weekday, and he could be making money elsewhere I stick £200 a day into his account before he has chance to refuse to take anything.
 
Stanners said:
JIB rates in the link to give you an idea of what they get paid.

http://www.jib.org.uk/documents/publications/128-jib-ind-det-2015-2016.pdf
Click to expand...

That seems very cheap. That's ~£220 for 2 days work.

Skiddley said:
My dad is qualified and often says the same.

If it's the weekend, I buy him a few beers that night. If it's a weekday, and he could be making money elsewhere I stick £200 a day into his account before he has chance to refuse to take anything.
Click to expand...

I was thinking around the £200 per day mark to be honest, but I was sort of hoping it'd be less as I'm skint!
 
How good of a friend are they? If a good friend tried to pay me for helping them out I'd probably feel a bit weird taking the money. Assuming they offered to do it and you didn't force them into it of course.

I've spent the last few weekends and several days after work helping a friend strip a tonne of wallpaper and various things out his house - a quick tot up shows about 57 hours :eek:. I was happy with being paid in takeaways :p.
 
I'd give him £150-200 tbh. I'd be happy with that if helping a friend out. I also don't normally take money.
 
Above really!

If they rejected it and weren't sacrificing other work or had nothing else on then I wouldn't be paying full rate :)

£100 p/day sounds fine to me
 
Two days for a daywork electrician capable of fitting and testing a consumer unit should be 150 to 200 a day.

Has he signed and tested the unit off? If he has definitely cough up
 
The JIB rates are the base rates for an electrician working on the books for a company(he has holiday and sickness pay). A self employed spark would be more towards 20-25 an hour.
 
Does said friend have a wife/husband/gf/bf?

If they will not take cash, how about a gift card for a nice hotel to cover a night away and a meal?

Or how about a driving experience day?

Maybe something like that would be much more appreciated, and of day he seems a great mate and he will be more than happy that he could have helped you out, a none cash gift may be better in this situation.
 
Stanners said:
The JIB rates are the base rates for an electrician working on the books for a company(he has holiday and sickness pay). A self employed spark would be more towards 20-25 an hour.
Click to expand...

Just to elaborate on this, what stannersis trying to say, but perhaps not clearly (sorry!)

Is that regardless of whether a chap works for himself, or a large contractor is that charge-out rate and what the chap who does the job earns and hour are completely separate beasts, normally a chap is charged out not far from twice his hourly rate. Typically for a sparky, he'll be charged out at between £25 and £35 an hour and will be paid between £12.50 and £17.50

@OP, if hes your mate and says he doesn't want anything, buy him a few beers and be ready to return the favor with what ever your speciality is :cool:
 
maccapacca said:
Two days for a daywork electrician capable of fitting and testing a consumer unit should be 150 to 200 a day.

Has he signed and tested the unit off? If he has definitely cough up
Click to expand...

He hasn't signed off yet as there's still a smidge of work to do, but yes he will be signing off (hopefully!). I'm not sure if he had work lined up, but I'm sure he could've found something on the days that he was helping me out.

GinG said:
Does said friend have a wife/husband/gf/bf?

If they will not take cash, how about a gift card for a nice hotel to cover a night away and a meal?

Or how about a driving experience day?

Maybe something like that would be much more appreciated, and of day he seems a great mate and he will be more than happy that he could have helped you out, a none cash gift may be better in this situation.
Click to expand...

That's a great shout, but he's having a load of building work done at the minute and he's just been given a hefty tax bill, so I reckon the cash would be more useful at the moment.

Adam_151 said:
@OP, if hes your mate and says he doesn't want anything, buy him a few beers and be ready to return the favor with what ever your speciality is :cool:
Click to expand...
I'm unlikely to be able to repay the favour any time soon. It'll take a while to clock up 2 days worth of IT support any time soon!
 
My friend is a spark and he just works for around £125 a day normally I think.
His mates rates when doing stuff for me is £75 a day which i'm more than happy to pay and he is more than happy to work for me at that rate.
 
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