David Carter is the owner and CEO of Handy Man Repairs, Inc., in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Carter is a member of both the Society of Automotive Engineers and the National Kitchen & Bath Association, with more than 50 years of experience in the home renovation industry. He is an expert in the areas of carpentry, plumbing, electrical, mechanics, and painting. In this piece, he explains the best way to estimate costs on a home plumbing project.
When I visit a client’s home to give an estimate for a particular job, I always give my clients estimates for the worst case scenario and the most likely scenario. I do that because, when it comes to plumbing, you just never know. Especially in older homes, a small job can quickly multiply in size if things were not done properly when the pipes were first installed.
To give you an example, I once went in to a woman’s home to replace her commode, which should have been a simple project. Unfortunately, it turned out that the supply line to her toilet’s valve was defective. And then from there, there were more problems and defective pieces. In cases like that, it can just keep on going and going and going. So I make my clients aware of all of those possibilities right from the start as I don’t want anyone to be surprised.
Most plumbers (who just do plumbing) will quote their prices on a per hour basis. Now they can do that because they don’t care about their clients for the most part. They are going to go in and fix the problem, and their meter is running the whole time and costs are just adding up for the client.
What I do instead is I give people a flat fee estimate based on the entire cost of what I believe the job is going to take to complete. I guarantee my clients that the final price will not be higher than this estimate. Even if I underestimated the time involved in a project, my initial estimated price is still going to be what I charge. And if I pull off the project quicker than expected, then the price will be less. But it definitely will not be more as I can promise my clients that.
When you start talking about toilet bowl plumbing repairs, you’ll hear horror stories about cast irons that broke, or having to saw off around the rims. I actually worked on a toilet bowl where the house was built on a concrete slab and the toilet was actually placed into the concrete. I spent 1.5 hours with a grinder to grind the whole thing down to a nub, but even then I did not charge my client a higher price.
So I give clients an estimate based on a worse-case scenario and also what I think the final cost really is going to be, based on the last couple jobs I have taken that were similar in nature. I want to make sure my clients know what they are getting into before I start work on any project.
I never want to go into a client’s home and surprise them. My clients trust me, and I just don’t do that to people. People hire handymen for their jobs because of that, and I would never want to break the trust I have developed with my clients.
