heat pump quote - is this reasonable?
I am looking to install a new heating/cooling system in my house upstate. i got this quote, can anyone tell me if this seems reasonable? The job is repurposing all of the existing ductwork, electric, drains, thermostat wiring, but as noted new wiring has to be run for the heat pump because the existing system is AC only…the price quoted is $12,400 but they did not break it down at all so I have no idea how much is the equipment and how much is labor….
Install New First Co. Hydrocoil Handler
24,000 BTU capacity
Reconnect to existing heat lines
Reconnect to existing ductwork
Rewire system to handle heat pump function
Purge and bleed out heat lines from boiler
Reconnect to existing nest thermostat
Install New Lennox outdoor Heat Pump condenser
2 Ton, 16 SEER
Set on new level padding
Reconnect to existing electrical
Purge and drain refrigerant lines
Fill system with new R410A refrigerant
Run new thermostat wire from condenser to handler
any insight would be much appreciated. thanks.
randolph
in General Discussion 2 years and 8 months ago
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83 replies
bocuckoo | 2 years and 8 months ago
I really don’t understand what is in question. Contractors certainly do not hold a monopoly and nor do they price fix with their competition. In an area with population density you certainly have your choice of contractors. All parties on this sight have recommended getting multiple bids and doing extensive research in order to make an educated choice. What other industry/service is it common place to address a bid/cost like you are doing? Whether it is profit margin, workers comp, costs of labor, overhead etc etc, a contractor has every right to quote a job as he/she sees fit…just as you the homeowner has every right to decline it. Perhaps you just dont want to put the work in to find the best fit for your project or feel entitled to have the “best” contractor do it for the “lowest” price???
Master Plvmber | 2 years and 8 months ago
> @randolph
> amen. this site is overrun with primadonna contractors.
Let’s put it to a vote and see if people would rather have your posts or mine here.
Either way, go crazy. I won’t comment on your posts anymore.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
Randolph, even if workers comp is tax deductible, it still adds to costs – it is still expensive – and i would rather have that money in my pocket and pay taxes on it than not have it. self employed people understand all of this. Most business people who are in a capacity of managing finances get it as well. My mom was an hr manager for a li re owner/manager (apt complexes) and she worked closley with the people involved in construction and maintenance and she gets it. I have a plumber coming here to bring me a door today he wants to pay what i consider a lot of money to have modified – he gets it. Some people don’t understand it. The people who least understand it are over here by me, civil servents and the like who have great benefits andvretirement plans.
I hope you don’t think i am one of the primidonna contractors. A lot of what i am saying on here i did not understand myself until i worked in it and i try to be fair and help people in a generous and less self serving way.
randolph | 2 years and 8 months ago
> @twentypercentofx
> Also, don’t be so sensitive.
amen. this site is overrun with primadonna contractors.
randolph | 2 years and 8 months ago
> @doorsbythetinkerswagon
> Customers have no idea of the cost of worker’s comp
every business owner pays workman’s comp, even on my s corp that is essentially a passthrough with one employee (myself). once again, the costs of doing business are not exclusive to contractors but somehow they feel they are in some special group that has to struggle extra hard. it is really frustrating.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
In smaller markets and rural areas, contractors who take deposits and disappear and do shoddy work would not survive. Word would get out.
Contractors don’t like contractors who do shoddy work and steal. Some people who do this are not contractors but fraudsters from the start. We have to bid agaist these miscreants and those types often underbid us making us look bad, like our prices are high.
We can blame the city (and homeowners) for allowing many of these people to exist; the city makes it too easy. For instance, in every municipality surrounding nyc contractors must carry liability insurance. Not nyc. If nyc forced us to carry it, i suspect an entire tier of bottom feeders would disappear removing people who are less committed to this industry. Also, in other municipalities, if a consumer hires an unlicensed contrator, both the contractor and homeowner get a fine. Not here in nyc; if we fined both, homeowners would not be hiring these miscreants. I know a guy in suffolk county who was an employee of a contractor. The contractor’s license was exp ired by one day. The dept of consumer affairs found him on a job and handcuffed him and took him away. Have we ever seen this in nyc?
We work in an environment that encourages shoddy contractors and discourages compliance. Occassionally i would have employees with me who suggest reporting unlicensed contractors or other miscreants who are working in our vicinity, say down the block. I tell them “we do not report anyone for anything” and i force them to acknowledge what i said. The reason is, i don’t believe we are in an environment where the consumer really wants anything done about people who take deposits and disappear or are not committed to what they are doing or might be doing any unlicenced work, including electrical. Some consumers like to roll the dice with bottom feeding contractors and their low prices. There is also so much illegal work going on that there is an attitude that that is the accepted way and everyone must mind their own business. My fear is if we ever reported anyone for doing unlicensed work, the consumers (all of them including twentypercentfix and others who hate shoddy contractors) would vilify the legitimate contractor reporting the bad actor. Can anyone tell me they would laud a contractor who reported another, even an unlicensed one?
I saw an unlicensed contractor putting up cheap interior plywood (sandiply) as facia board on a house. In my neighborhood. I’d loved to have seen that guy shut down. I knew better than to drop a dime.
This city can do a lot more to fix a lot of it but they continue to make laws they have no intention of enforcing and when they do enforce them some people get a lecture and slap on the wrist and the people trying to do the right thing could get massive fines. The city seems to like to enforce things after something goes wrong, when they can maximize fines.
A certain element on this board will hate me for saying this, but regulation is good. More of it is better. It is good for the consumer and contractors a like because we could all exist in a safe and fair market.
Master Plvmber | 2 years and 8 months ago
> @twentypercentofx
> And there is a whole industry of attorneys who chase after contractors that do shoddy work, leave job sites abandoned after taking deposits, and fail to build to code
Touché.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
And twentypercent fix, you describe what seems to be a gap that exists between homeowners and contractors. Perhaps some of that is fueled by customers: a few months back i asked a homeowner who was talking about the problems he or she was having with a contractor on this board if he had been the lowest bid. The person replied “yes, but not by much. Like 20%”. A statement like that shows the differences in the reality that exists between the homeowners renovating these houses and those doing the work. I am happy for people who feel that 20% is not a lot of money and happy they exist because those are the people who can afford to hire us, but for most contractors i know, if their incomes suddenly fell by 20% in one year, their households would be in very serious trouble. I mean late rent and unpaid mortgages. Twenty percent is a lot of money for most people doing the work. If homeowners could be sensitive to that as they negotiate with contractors it might help these relationships a little.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
People would be very wise to avoid quotes that are more than say 8% below a field of quotes. When customers select the lower quote, like 20% lower than the next lowest, they are selecting a bid that the contractor somehow musfigured. Keep in mind, there are people reading this right now who if they made a mistake on a project at work and their boss penalized them by demoting them and cutting their salary by 20%, they would lose their houses. That is the reality for most households. If a contractor is sort of just making it with his household bills and he f’s up a quote and goes into a larger project (something spanning months) and is working through it and has used up all of his progress payments paying for materials, labor, and himself and realizes there is a lot more work to do and the money he has remaining will cover materials or labor or his wage but not all three, he has three choices: ask the customer for more money or take another job so he can feed his family or simply walk. This is why we hear customers say “he was never here” or he “abandoned the job”.
This can happen with well intended contractors just like it can happen to any of you reading this who can or have made a mistake figuring a budget at work. It can also happen when people with other issues fail to manage money.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
To what i say above, this did not always hold true when the person selecting contractors had a lot of experience managing like projects with competent contractors. It was more the rule for the less experienced people in lower management (the level i was at). Keep in mind, in the larger picture, homeowners are “less experienced” and most people managing several projects on a single family home will never gain the experience of a property manager.
I think gennady said it: “study the proposals and ask questions”. When you do this, you will realize that the more experienced people have thought the job through more and are more conversant with potential challenges and solutions. They have the answers in their head while the less experienced person has to look them up. Its like anyone else on this board who is at the top of their game; you study your field, make your work go smooth, your boss is happy, and you get paid more than the guy who has not figured it all out yet. Its exactly the same thing.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
When i worked for professional property managers, we were required to get three quotes for larger jobs and jobs where we were using untested contractors. We were not allowed to pick a quote that was much lower than the next lowest quote. The fear is the contractor is desparate or has overlooked something and will not get through jobs. Its not that we are perpetuating it; it is standard practice in the industry and readers here prove its worth when they come on and talk about how their contractor screwed the job up and abandoned it and we learn that their bid was 20% lower than the others. That story repeats itself a couple times a year on this board.
carolina-moscoso | 2 years and 8 months ago
Also, don’t be so sensitive. I’m not suggesting that all contracts are dishonest. And if you read my original post, I very much admit that I’m well aware that this is what the market supports. As I said, it’s really the lack of transparency in pricing and this general “be wary of the lowest quote” nonsense that you all perpetuate. At the end of the day, we want the work done, done well, and at a price that is reasonable and fair for all parties.
carolina-moscoso | 2 years and 8 months ago
And there is a whole industry of attorneys who chase after contractors that do shoddy work, leave job sites abandoned after taking deposits, and fail to build to code so not sure what your point is ?
carolina-moscoso | 2 years and 8 months ago
And there is a whole industry of attorneys who chase after contractors that do shoddy work, leave job sites abandoned after taking deposits, and fail to build to code so not sure what your point is ?
Master Plvmber | 2 years and 8 months ago
@twentypercentfix There is a whole industry of attorneys who chase contractors’ clients who don’t pay them. It happens that often. It’s pretty standard procedure to do the work and then present or send an invoice in hopes of getting paid either on the spot or on larger projects within 30 days. But “hope” is what it is and it’s at the end of every job. Who does the power dynamic favor?
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
@twentypercentfix: “There is always a lopsided power dynamic between homeowners and contractors to the contractor’s benefit.” This is entirely incorrect. The power dynamic favors the customer simply because if the customer does not feel the price is just, they shop until they find a just price. Less savvy customers who assume that all contractors are getting rich keep shopping until they find the lowest priced, least experienced contractor and what they learn then is there is no way to do a job that cheap and properly. The just quotes for any job should be grouped. The market keeps the contractors honest (if they want the job that is. If they don’t, they might bid high)
What i have just said is true unless there is something called collusion taking place where say in a small market with a limited number of contractors meet in a back room and decide where to price higher bids with one bidding lower so they get the job. This is illegal and i doubt it could happen in a competitive market like nyc.
This system is what free market capitalism gives us. Fo r the consumer, its great. For the contractor it is horrible because we have a municipality and state and federal government that makes laws and fails to enforce them. For contractors who believe in doing the right thing and following the law, this is very costly. What often happens in this half baked environment is contractors who break the law get the jobs.
Again, most quotes should be grouped. The free market will protect the consumer with the exception of an unreasonably low quote and the low one is suspect.
andriywww1990 | 2 years and 8 months ago
It is not that contractors purposely lack transparency. With materials on jobs like this it is easy to track and if i were to do a time and matetials job i offer up the reciepts. The problem comes when we estimate labor and have to cover overhead. Customers do not understand overhead and what contributes to it and that it must be paid. As far as labor; it varies from job to job and we take a best guess and add 15% or so as a contingency. Here is where the problem comes in; a customer might as for you to assume you don’t need the contingency and write it that way. But every job somehow uses the contingency. If something breaks by accident, or a part is defective, or whatever – right away a customer will say “that is not my fault”. If they are resonable enough to realize that the world is not perfect and we sometimes drop a can of something or break a piece of glass, they might be ok but if we put a guy in a van to pick the replacement up at 80 an hour and the traffic is tied up and takes most of an afternoon, the customer might say “traffic is not my pr oblem”. So you write the quote and don’t mention a contingency.
When i was first in this, i made the mistake of letting customers know too much about time and how i figured it and when we do that they question a lot. It is easier to write the quote and tell them if they can find a better deal, they should take it.
Customers have no idea of the cost of worker’s comp (mine is 17% of payroll), disability, fica, liability insurance, fuel for heavy vans, replacement of tools that break more on jobs….
bocuckoo | 2 years and 8 months ago
What you are describing is basically supply and demand…There is alot of demand for equipment, labor and expertise you are seeking with a limited supply. Like any business, pricing will be determined by what the market allows. As you saidm there is nothing wrong and its not lopsided. Its based on too few qualified contactors entering the trade and relative wealth of local homeowners. I just dont understand the prevalent belief that a contractor that makes a decent profit margin is fleecing anyone no more than a local restaurant, restaurant, retail store etc etc. Why should a tradesman not make the same income as the local homeowner? To do so and run a professional business, your view would be that they are “fleecing” and abusing a “lopsided power dynamic”…
carolina-moscoso | 2 years and 8 months ago
Fleeced=Intentional lack of pricing transparency for equipment and labor as to leave the consumer unable to determine the actual equipment and labor charges they are paying for. The more “padding” for a contractor the more they profit. Not saying it’s wrong per se, I’d do the same thing if that’s what the market supports (and it does…for now). There is always a lopsided power dynamic between homeowners and contractors to the contractor’s benefit. We need them and odds are they have plenty of work coming in and don’t need us. It’s the system us homeowners are told we have to deal with.