Change of career to Heating Engineer

[strepsi]

Good evening,

I am looking to get some honest idea of life as Heating Engineer, I am considering a career change.

Can you make a good living out of it (eventually), appreciate first couple of years maybe tough.

Cheers

 

[kay-jay]

Long hours, knackered body and no money for years. Will take you four years till you're any good another four to build up business to a living wage. Massive outlay on tools and equipment. Massive responsibility.

 

[townfanjon]

^^^^^^^^ says it all , I could add quite a bit more.

 

[REDSAW]

ditto that, year 7 just making some money above tesco rate now s.e.p on my own and not subbying!!

i recon i have another 3 left as my left knees gone.doh

 

[strepsi]

Wow! I have to be honest, I was hoping that there maybe some positives. But this is the reason why I looked at this forum.

Cheers for the honesty.

 

[AlexGas]

Good evening,

I am looking to get some honest idea of life as Heating Engineer, I am considering a career change.

Can you make a good living out of it (eventually), appreciate first couple of years maybe tough.

Cheers

You have to be in it for the right reasons. Otherwise it's not gonna happen.

 

[strepsi]

You have to be in it for the right reasons. Otherwise it's not gonna happen.

What do you consider to be the right reason's?

 

[jtsplumbing]

What do you do for a living now ?? Remember B4 you can work on boilers first you have to pass gas exam's / then you need to learn about all different system layouts, this is not a job you can just jump into, I know it looks easy when you see someone fixing your boiler ,but it takes several years and lots of money to get there, but you will be forever paying out to do this job [training / insurance / tools/ etc.] on top of that it no longer pays anywhere near what people think ! Don't believe what you read in he press

 

[lame plumber]

van £20k, contents £10k, courses to learn the game £&k plus, getting the picture, its not like they say in the mail

 

[strepsi]

You have to be in it for the right reasons. Otherwise it's not gonna happen.

What do you consider to be the right reason's?

 

[Matt06]

Going to price jobs which you may not get/ people use you to check the price of who they are going to use = Fuel, time etc
If Self Employed

Getting phone calls from companies which want you to work for hardly anything

 

[strepsi]

Can I ask, are you all Heating Engineers? If so do you enjoy it, it all sounds a bit doom and gloom!

 

[lame plumber]

stressful, odd hours, painful on the body, never hurt when I had an office job.

 

[cr0ft]

I'm a plumber/electrician and training to be a gas fitter at the moment. I love my job but it's certainly not for people who don't deal with stress well.

The reality for me was 3 years when I started out earning less than minimum wage. In my first year I earned about £3,000.

6 years in the money side is pretty good and I work on average about 9 hours a day, maybe 10 some days. I run a business with 2 other staff members and we have 2 vans. I really enjoy building work in general and I find the job very rewarding. The downsides though are: -

1.) Dealing with customers who don't value your skills at all. Unfortunately 90% of the public just want the cheapest job going and these aren't really my target customers.
2.) Any plumber, I don't care what they say, is going to have the odd callback to a leak that's started after they've left. Pipes have this habit of not leaking when checked and sometimes a leak starts later. This can be quite stressful and tests your customer service skills. I think most plumbers will have had to repair a ceiling for a customer at some point!
3.) Even doing it cheap I can't see how you could spend less than £10k to get up and running, that's just for the van and stock/tools etc.
4.) There is no shortage of competition so you had better be good at what you do!

Being a good business person is probably more important to whether you will do well out of it or not than being a good tradesperson in my opinion. An average tradesperson who is a good business person will do better at this than a top tradesperson who is an average business person.

I left a secure job in the military at the end of 2008 and the road has been very tough but I couldn't be happier now. It's been around 4 very hard years though where I've questioned many times why I left my job. I don't do that now though - I'm really glad I did.

In this line of business as soon as you start to focus on the money you soon get brought down to earth with a bang. Focus on delivering the best customer service you can to each customer and the money will take care of itself.

Hope this helps!

 

[REDSAW]

i would cost the gas side qualifications from 0 - 100% qualified around the £7k mark! then theres the re-tests and yearly fees!!!!
van= at least £1500 etc so soon jumps to £10k and will take about 3 years to cover that.imo

employed rate realisticaly is around the £24k p.a rate.

you have to love it to do it to get personal gratification, if i was to do the time again i would be a gynecologist

 

[Masood]

Can I ask, are you all Heating Engineers? If so do you enjoy it, it all sounds a bit doom and gloom!

It's not all doom and gloom but it's not the fairytale that the newspapers would have you believe. People are being brutally honest. Your knees and lower back will be destroyed. Your faith in human nature will be demolished. Your savings will disappear as will a decent night's sleep for a
long time as you worry about the lack of bookings in the diary.

Then you'll get the job satisfaction of fixing a knackered boiler and giving an elderly person heat and hot water again. Or a full system designed, installed, commissioned and working. The feeling of pride when you get a phone call saying "I got your number from so and so who said you did a fantastic job"

There are good and bad aspects of this job. You can't do it half-heartedly, you need to love it to keep bouncing back.

 

[AlexGas]

What do you consider to be the right reason's?

Reasons, cos you love it, cos you want it so much, you want it more and more. Cos you are exited, satisfied and happy about being a plumber. Cos, you are prepared and want to learn something new every single day. The question is not – Can we do it? It’s – How are we gonna do it? So, your decision making and being clever with your hands should be spot on. Cos, you take a great pride in your work. You should be prepared to deal with people – your customers, any time of a day. You are in it, cos you are getting up every morning and looking forward to make a difference, do good and enjoy personal satisfaction and sense of achievement by the end of the day, hopefully. Well… you might get paid at this point... If it’s all about the money without the above – you can forget it!

 

[IDCHAPPY]

I love my job, but it took me 10 years to reach a level where i classed myself as a decent engineer

 

[Rickster123]

On a more positive note I love my job. I get great job satisfaction, I'm doing a grand a week, me knees ache but then that's probably just old age. And I get to work for council house milfs on a weekly basis.
Bad points.... Flux in cuts still hurts more than a kick in the balls.

 

[Stanios]

I left my 20k pa office job at 20 to become a plumber. Even now 3 years later I just make half of what I earned in office as an apprentice. I learned that unlike most other jobs as a plumber everything I do I am accountable for.. You take on this risk and responsibility and in return you get very very little. You charge a price to fit a radiator but you can spend countless hours doing paperwork, dealing with tricky customer, callbacks, chasing the payment, all this extra work rewards you with no money and plenty of stress.

The reason why I do it is one because I love fixing and installing stuff - id do it for free really
and two Im a hard worker and rather work hard for myself making my own money than working hard for someone else to make them money

 

[jefaz]

I work for a GDN....previously a heating engineer and can now say it's he best job I've had. It pays very well and is nowhere near as rough on the body. A lot of responsibility however.

 

[Rickster123]

I work for a GDN....previously a heating engineer and can now say it's he best job I've had. It pays very well and is nowhere near as rough on the body. A lot of responsibility however.

GDN? .... Gnome day nursery?

 

[jefaz]

GDN? .... Gnome day nursery?

Ha I'm not quite a gnome at 6ft1.
A Gas Distribution Network....ie grid.

 

[Rickster123]

Ha I'm not quite a gnome at 6ft1.
A Gas Distribution Network....ie grid.

Ahh that makes more sense!

and I didn't think you were a gnome I thought you were looking after the infant gnomes... Obvious really....

 

[CXR100]

if I was to do it all again I would follow the same route I did, wouldt change nothing, but probably a better trade to go into is plastering, 50 quid for a decent trowel , a 50 quid paddle mixer and a few buckets!! and they don't earn much less than us!! probably better off than us end of the day! no callouts and silly hours!

 

[TheCockneyScot]

I was in the same boat as you mate, I was down a different path however.

I left college at 18 to go University, stuck it out for around 4 months and left because I hated being known as a 'lazy student' - I then went into the police, passed my interviews and assessments and was shafted by their HR department when they told me I couldn't progress as they had made 'Clerical mistakes' with the amount of officers they allowed to train. Then went into CAD design, stuck through it for as long as I could but hated sitting on my bum watching my life drain away before me.

So I chose plumbing, gave up policing and University to be a plumber. Why? Because it's the self pride of knowing you have a trade, knowing your a plumber in itself is quite rewarding, I may not be fully qualified yet (Only on my NVQ 2) but I still feel a sense of pride.

Believe me, if you didn't want to do it you'd know within the first day of being an apprentice. Waking up at half 5 every morning, coming home in agony, looking like a tramp on the train home and busting your balls is all part of the learning process, one that's worth it in the end.

Contrary to above, there is money to be made in this game. You need to be a good businessman and know your stuff with your hands however before you can even imagine earning what they tell you in the papers. If you want your own business which makes good profit prepare for 60+ hour weeks and find a good accountant.

 

[hammers4spanner]

Said it before and i will say it again TILING TILING TILING!!!!!

Half the outlay ,need only one braincell and still bag four figure pay packets

 

[hammers4spanner]

Thats a good point you end up filthy at end of day

 

[cr0ft]

I think the phrase the grass is always greener on the other side is very apt here. We do tiling and plastering work as part of our building projects. I don't mind doing them, I think we do them to a very high standard but I certainly wouldn't want to do them full time. Both are physically very tiring jobs, much more so than plumbing imho. We use a plasterer who we subcontract in on bigger projects and I am both full of pity and admiration for him. He's been working on the tools for longer than I've been alive but his shoulders must be absolutely knackered.

The money the papers throw about can come your way but certainly not as a non-gas plumber in a one man business. Our business really started to take off when we added electrical work into the mix of things we do. I can imagine gas work being the same. Any work that homeowners aren't supposed to do themselves attracts a premium and if you can get into that you will earn much more. Pretty obvious really!

Don't think people on here are being doom and gloom merchants (although perhaps some are ) but don't expect to be earning much for 3 to 4 years.

 

[strepsi]

First time I have posted on this forum, very interesting the conversation developing.

I think I am in a fortunate position where I can grow the business, I do accept that there is a cost when you set a business up.

I have been in recruitment for 10 years now and all the job satisfaction has gone, but I have learnt how to deal with a wide variety of people.

I was thinking, I am going to get on the job training with a plumber/heating engineer working 3 days a week with him. If I combine that with doing a course in tiling and plastering, would that be a good combination of skills. Unfortunately as I am colour blind being a sparky is out of the question.

Thanks for all the feedback.

 

[Matt06]

I worked with my dad when i started ( Labouring mostly / learning general building work ) Which i think was a good start as i learnt alot in most areas of domestic construction (Carpentry, groundwork, tiling, roofing, brickwork, etc etc )
Personally i think you need to be able to do basic carpentry and brickwork atleast for the areas of the job which are necessary i.e bricking up old flues and lifting boards
As you don't want to be working like some plumbers (Not lifting floor boards have to wait for carpenter etc)
I have nt done alot of electrics as i get my brother to as he's faster and knows more

 

[jtsplumbing]

Most sparky's wiring heating seem to be colour blind anyway so don't let that put you off, if you have contacts and can live on poor earnings for a few years fine, Position you are in you must see who gets the cream payment, its certainly not the trades-man doing the work

 

[tomplumb83]

OP
You tend to do this job because you have to, not because you want to!
Ive been plumbing since leaving school so I dont know any different but if you already have a steady job with decent pay things must be bad to consider plumbing!
No pension, no added benefits (other than said milfs, of which ive never sampled. Honest), very average pay after expenses, no holiday pay, lots of stress & hassle
No reason why you cant make a go of it but it all depends on your situation whether its worthwhile or not.

 

[cr0ft]

First time I have posted on this forum, very interesting the conversation developing.

I think I am in a fortunate position where I can grow the business, I do accept that there is a cost when you set a business up.

I have been in recruitment for 10 years now and all the job satisfaction has gone, but I have learnt how to deal with a wide variety of people.

I was thinking, I am going to get on the job training with a plumber/heating engineer working 3 days a week with him. If I combine that with doing a course in tiling and plastering, would that be a good combination of skills. Unfortunately as I am colour blind being a sparky is out of the question.

Thanks for all the feedback.

If you are going to start off doing plumbing then you certainly are going to want to combine that with tiling/plastering and look at doing bathrooms yourself. There is good money in fully doing bathrooms and to be honest it's not a huge leap from there to do kitchens (in fact kitchens are easier). If you aren't going to be gas safe registered or an electrician then to earn good money you need to be doing bathrooms really. Otherwise all you are left with is smaller jobs as the larger jobs like changing a hot water cylinder will normally go to gas fitters when they do boiler swaps.

Do not underestimate the effect the arrival of plastic pipe has had on the plumbing industry!! It's really devalued the industry by making it much easier for Joe Public to do their own repairs. Even if the pipe inevitably ends up bursting at some point (the weak point is the o-rings and when they go they go)!

I need to start offering courses in tiling and plastering I think, to out of area people wanting to get into the trade! It's not hard to be plastering a wall/ceiling well by the end of a 5 day course that's for sure. It's just knowing your limits. Bathroom sized rooms are easy. Large living rooms are not so much so.

 

[cr0ft]

Most sparky's wiring heating seem to be colour blind anyway so don't let that put you off, if you have contacts and can live on poor earnings for a few years fine, Position you are in you must see who gets the cream payment, its certainly not the trades-man doing the work

Sadly not. The money goes to the person who is getting the jobs or the builders at the top of the chain on new build developments.

It's not uncommon to hear of self employed plumbers bringing in £18-£20k per year, i.e. as much as they could earn on an employed basis. That's once they are established.

The potential is definitely there for you to earn more than your current job but of course the risk of starting up is something like 90% of businesses fail within the first year.

I am always pointing out to the lads when I see a new plumbing company around Lincoln. In nearly all of these cases you don't see the vans again within 6 months.