Hi EasyMCSLtd
I appreciate the on-going dialogue but I feel we might end up having to agree to differ! However, I'm not giving up easily and want to clarify some matters as well as try and give a picture of how difficult it might be where I live.
Hi dontknowitall ,
I will give you a brief rundown on the costs you are looking at for certification. The average cost is £1,100 for an installer to become MCS Certified and then £400 a year to be audited each year. Don't include the ongoing support cost as that is optional if you dont want to maintain it yourself.
I'm assuming you mean't to say "Don't include the ongoing support cost ... if you want to maintain it yourself."
For £1,100 you have MCS and then £400 a year on top of your other costs to keep your certification. If you needed to go on a course to learn a new technology you are looking at approx £300 for a certified one and that is one off.
I'm assuming this means if I want to do solar thermal and photovoltaic this means an upfront cost of £1,100 (average) plus £300 (thermal) plus £300 (photovoltaic). Am I correct in thinking the £1,100 is the cost of conducting a QMS and are those courses 2-day courses? If one day I'm not sure I'd have learned enough to feel confident of installing the systems.
In terms of day rates if you speak to other installers in the industry i would think your day rate will drastically improve if you are now installing a Solar Thermal installation or Air Source Heat Pump installation where your competition is alot smaller, demand far higher and customers are putting these systems in because of the incentives available, which aren't available in the other markets you are working in. Advertising probably wont even be necessary as most installers get flooded with work because there is a shortage of experienced engineers who are certified to install these technologies.
Sounds a little like a free lunch!!
I'm sorry but there is much rural poverty in the country. According to an article in yesterday's Times newspaper "More than 928,000 rural households live below the official poverty line in struggling towns and villages. In sparsely populated areas, the proportion of low-income households has increased from 26 to 30 per cent in the last two years ... the cost of living in rural areas is £2,600 more than in towns and cities, according to the Office for National Statistics."
These areas are places such as Cornwall, Devon, Herefordshire, mid and east Wales, ***bria. Where I live, the area receives money from the EU and the average salary is 20% below the national average wage.
A cheap plumber round here is £150 a day with a £30 call out and an expensive one is £200 a day with £50 call out. There are not that many wealthy people around as they tend to live in more expensive parts of the country because that is where the well paid work is.
Your oftec is £160 a year your MCS will be £400 a year? but for £400 a year bringing in 1 heat pump job at £7,000 you will have paid it for the next 5 years+?
I welcome any thoughts.
In many of these rural areas I can't see many people installing a £7,000 system. There's much talk about and they hear prices of £3,000 or so. Then, when you explain that's just for the renewable bling but doesn't include labour, nor the new hot water cylinder, nor the cost to bring up the water pressure and flow rate to a suitable level etc they are just turned off. (Many rural properties do not have mains water.)
For a salary of £20,000, with £2,000 or so being spent on oil, at least £2,500 spent on motoring costs (no effective rural transport), £5,000 on food, then there's the mortgage, etc it doesn't leave much room for a £7,000 heating system when you still have to keep your oil boiler running for the times the renewable system cannot cope with demand.
I'm not saying it's a waste of money becoming MCS registered but I need to ensure that it will be a profitable investment.
So the cost, as far as I can make out, is £1,100 set up of the Quality Management System.
The course for solar thermal is £300.
The course for photovoltaic is £300.
There is a £400 annual registration cost.
So the first year will cost me £2,100 and each subsequent year will cost me £400.
Are these the ONLY costs? Does this price mean that I can LEGALLY sign off work and my customers can benefit from the feed-in-tarriff or whatever government grant systems there are? Do I have to re-train every so many years?
I am NOT trying to be negative. It is an exciting development in plumbing and one I thought of before I became a plumber. In addition, where I live there aren't that many installations and the population is talking about it so there will be a market. I just want to know the sort of costs and time involved before spending a fair amount of money (bearing in mind that I don't even earn £20,000!)
