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Comment by bergenty | Hacker News Reader

Labor prices in the US are silly high. I’m paying the plumber like $160/hr which is a joke in my opinion.

There is a huge shortage of people in the trades and plumbers will charge what what the market can bear. Also plumbing and electrical are two things where if you do them wrong you can incur many thousands of dollars in damage very quickly. As a plumber you spend a lot of time "off the clock" - driving to houses, buying parts, doing paperwork, staying up to date on code. If they can't cover those expenses they can't be a plumber.

Labor prices are high because there is a shortage of people willing to do the work at lower rates. The US labor market is very tight, doubly so if you are in a high-COL area because those have even stronger growth.

I would consider that well worth the price for not having to deal with human waste transport issues! And that's because I have actually done that work myself a few times.

But yes, I know not all plumbing issues are waste related.

Been running new PEX supply lines to replace the leaking galvanized ones and it's been surprisingly easy.

Everything is easy, until you do it wrong and flood your house causing $15k in damages.

That's cheap.

Biglaw bills 2k an hour for a junior associate (basically checking if all the commas on your contract are in place)

$2k/hr is high for biglaw partners. Associates are starting at ~$600/hr and going up to $1,000 for senior associates: https://abovethelaw.com/2020/05/biglaw-firms-are-charging-ho...

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.)

Serious question, what would be your hourly rate to do the work yourself?

That's a really hard question to answer. I'm getting towards the end of a to-studs bathroom remodel, and it's taking an amazing amount of time, probably 300 hours. But, if I hired it all out it could easily have been $25K to be done to a similar standard. I'll have around $5K in materials in when I'm done. But I also know that if I hired it all out, there are a number of things I've done that wouldn't have been done, for example I ran 500 feet of 12-2 romex to replace current several current 12-2 aluminum runs, switched our bedrooms over to AFCI, ran several spare 12-2 runs for future renovation, removed a totally not to code wiring situation that was a fire waiting to happen...

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?

I'm not sure either, I'm also in the middle of a fairly extensive remodel (first floor of the house basically down to studs, most flooring ripped out, changing kitchen layout).

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?

When I did my kitchen + dining room remodel a few years ago, I ended up bringing someone in to finish the oak I put in, and refinish the rest of the oak in the living room (they were connected). I don't think I could do it in the 2 days they did, and I'd be almost certainly making a bigger mess (they had a sander with vacuum, truck mounted IIRC). I've also paid someone to replace our doors and windows.

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.

If it helps, I've done hardwood floors and tile but have a hard time with drywall and texturing. For the hardwood, I just needed someone who had done it before (my brother) to show me one time.

Unless you're a licensed electrician, that electrical work you did yourself is in violation of building codes and you'll need to pay an electrician to approve the work or you'll have difficulty selling your house.

This is probably not true, and it's at least not true for any of the places I've lived on the west coast. As long as an inspector signs off on it (which they have to do regardless of if you do the work or if an electrician does it), and it's found to be up to code, it's fine.

In many areas of the US, it’s perfectly legal to do your own residential electrical work, so long as you get the permits and inspections.

I didn't say it was illegal, I said he would have difficulty selling his house due to the electrical work performed by someone who isn't a licensed electrician.

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.

This is not true.

Permitted and inspected work is fine.

YMMV but this is absolutely not true in my case. I have building inspections filed with the city to back that assertion up. Our local building office is actually quite good to work with as a DIYer.

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.

My state doesn't license electricians at all and leaves it up to local governments to decide whether they want to require any sort of local license to be an electrician.

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.

Nobody is comparing outlet locations to a building plan at the time of sale.

Well, unless the house catches on fire after the sale and someone comes to sue you for improper disclosure.

That's assuming the install was in some way at fault, the faulty install causus a fire, the cause was determined, and the cause was traced back to me.

Im more worried about being hit by a meteor.

Probably between $50-60/hr. I’ve replaced PEX before and I found it pretty simple. Turn off the mains, cut the existing pipe and put the new piece in with some glue and couplers.

I’ve never heard of a PEX installation method that used glue. Perhaps your thinking if CPVC?

Yup. I'm all for paying fair wages and understand the overhead of travel time and idle time for small jobs, but still, $160/hr is way too much.

It isn't too much because that's what the market will bear. Why would anyone work for less than their market rate?

I mean, the backpressure to what the market will bear is people thinking something costs too much.

If it is too much, why are you not doing it yourself?

I do do things myself until either A) the likelihood and costs of me screwing it up and having to do it over cross some threshold B) the time commitment seems unreasonable or C) it really doesn't interest me. Edit: or D) I'm convinced they could do a significantly better job than me

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.

I guess my comment was actually a reply to bergenty , who by the very act of paying $160/hour to their plumber indicated $160/hour is not too much.

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.

Another factor for me is how much damage is it going to do to my body. For example, concrete removal is better done by someone with an excavator rather than me with a jackhammer.

> Another factor for me is how much damage is it going to do to my body.

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.

Because I don’t want to or don’t have the time? It still doesn’t justify the insane hourly cost.

If you have a better way to justify prices than supply and demand curves intersecting in markets where there is no barrier to entry or other manipulation, I would be interested to know.

Corollary would be, if you earn income, how are you justifying your price(s)?

Yes it does. Does the law of supply and demand not make sense to you?

I got estimates to replace alternator for Mitsubishi Montero Sport in Seattle area for $330. It took 40 minutes to do it yourself, first time, while reading instructions, using only one wrench on a parking lot of apartment complex. If I had to do it again it would take me 15 minutes. $160/h for plumber work is very reasonable price compared to $600/h for mechanic work.

I once had a bad fan on my heat pump (bearings went bad). I went in to replace it, but none of the local motor suppliers, and nobody I could find online, could offer a replacement. It was a fancy 2 stage motor, I guess...

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".

And you completely underestimate people's ability to screw that up.

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.

The book is used for warranty work. When you are paying customer you will not be charged by book time, but multiple of that.

You're paying $330 for an alternator because you're competing for the mechanic's time with someone who's head has been pumped full of "but what if a wheel falls off, better leave it to a professional" rhetoric and who has enough money from his FAANG RSUs to entertain the idea spending $200 on a 20min pad slap brake job.

My employer charges $300/hr for development work and I sit at a desk all day never touching sewage.

Which is the bigger joke?

The sucker paying your employer $300/hr!

No one pays $300/hr for dev work unless they’re idiots.

It's a pretty normal rate for domain-specific expertise within agencies. This isn't a special situation either, I've worked for multiple agencies that charge rates like this... some with thousands of employees.

There are a lot of idiots, apparently. Many of them working at Fortune 500s.

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