Am I way out of line here, or are the labor prices reasonable?
They offered a 25 year loan term, 0% interest, including the cost of a new roof.
But... The installed cost of a 7kW system with no batteries was over $5.68/Watt NOT INCLUDING THE ROOF!
So... financially the deal was actually objectively better than doing nothing because it increased monthly cash flow and required no money down. But, the solar company would be getting most of the savings from the system and would pass on about $50-80/month of those savings to me, but we'd be paying $200/month forever.
It pushes up the cost of labor across the board.
Are there more than a handful of independent sellers to choose from? If there are, and you are not willing to do the work yourself, then I would say the prices are reasonable.
When I shopped around for components, the prices did range from ~20-30EUR per panel to ~100EUR/panel.
I understand that how I initially phrased it sounded like maybe I was bundling that into labor.
Plus a lot of it is marketing and quoting expense. Advertising and paying for referrals eats up a big chunk of the bill. You (or someone) has to spend time generating quotes that turn into projects less than half the time.
I’d much rather just pay an engineer $1,000 to whip up some plans, and then hire people to follow those plans, rather than pay indirectly for a bunch of failed sales calls. Which is what I’m ending up doing.
Installing a (small) system to start with in the Netherlands costs down to an OOM less.
IIUC, the actual laborers aren't making anywhere near ~$20k per day (even for 5 people).
Overhead on labor should not be 2000%+.
If laborers were capturing all of the "labor" cost - they'd be making $1M per year working 5 days per week. Obviously, they wouldn't be 100% booked.
But they're probably not even averaging $100k - since electricians make less than that in most parts of the country, and most of the workers are making a lot less than the electrician.
The actual "labor" cost here - even counting for vacation and other benefits - is probably less than $5k. What's the other $15k?
It's certainly NOT profit. These companies don't have high margins.
It's also not materials - that's broken out into the materials costs which includes the more expensive regulated grid-tie inverters and whatnot.
Whatever it is - it appears to be unique to the US.
But yes, I know not all plumbing issues are waste related.
And on top of it, I gain experience and get to know my house inside out... But on the other hand, I haven't had a spare weekend for 6 months.
So how do you value that on a per hour basis?
Some things seem within the scope of somebody like myself (who doesn't do this as a day job). For instance, I'm comfortable with removing and replacing toilets, I can do basic drywall work, I can texture and paint and do backsplash. But I don't think I could redo hardwood and tile flooring myself, install an exterior sliding door, nor make cabinet faces that I'd be happy with. For that, I'd pay whatever a contractor calls Market Rate^tm.
I expect to not have any free weekends for at least the rest of the year. What would I pay for that? Maybe... $25-$30k?
Tile I didn't find so bad, with the exception that in the kitchen I did 8x48" tiles which I thought would make the job go faster, but they were a nightmare to set. The large format was just hard. The backsplash subway tile went super easy.
It wouldn't have mattered in the seller's market of the past few years, but it will absolutely be a dealbreaker now that we're entering into a buyer's market.
Permitted and inspected work is fine.
I've never done electrical work myself but I've hired electricians and as far as I can tell there is no licensing requirement in my local jurisdiction nor any sort of local license to be an electrician.
Im more worried about being hit by a meteor.
It makes sense really, it's better to work with DIYers to "backstop" their work by having an inspector look at their work and not be an A-hole about it, than to have them do the work anyway and cross their fingers. I love having the building inspectors check my work, worth the couple hundred bucks I pay for a permit.
Which is the bigger joke?
There are a lot of idiots, apparently. Many of them working at Fortune 500s.
Biglaw bills 2k an hour for a junior associate (basically checking if all the commas on your contract are in place)
Of course, that's in a different world than 90% of lawyers where they'll start at the $200–$300/hr range: https://old.reddit.com/r/LawFirm/comments/m710ce/junior_asso...
(Of course, associates aren't seeing 90% of the money they bill.)
Like sometimes I pay somebody to clean and fold all of my laundry or to deep clean parts of my home because getting those things out of the way and freeing up a chunk of my time without that overhead is quite helpful when I've got too much going on. Similarly sometimes I pay to get the oil changed in my car. Not buying the service really, but buying the time that it saves me.
No one is stopping someone from doing the plumbing work themself, there are lots of people selling plumbing labor, and the barrier to entry to becoming a plumber is not super high. So whatever the going price simply reflects the supply of people willing to do plumbing work.
I think it is fantastic that plumbers are getting $160/hour to do backbreaking and hazardous work that most people would rather not do.
That's a very good point. Some trades tend to be riskier than others but they all induce wear and tear on the body over time.
Corollary would be, if you earn income, how are you justifying your price(s)?
Mechanics tend to have a book that tell them what rate to charge and how long it should take. Then when you add in being in the Seattle area, that their taxes and property costs are off the hook because of all the computer programmers that happen to live in Seattle, earn well into the 6 figures, and post on HN, that their prices are not bad for people that don't want to turn a wrench.
So I called the big plumbing/heating place in town. They came in with a $750 quote to replace it, but they said: "It's not currently failing, but when we're in there it's usually a good idea to replace the contactors." I asked how much that would be. He looks up in a table "$375". "For a relay?!?" I later looked up the contactor price and it was less than $20, and it'd take me less than an hour to replace it, maybe 5 minutes "while I was in there".