Servicing Unvented Cylinders

[rodders09]

Hi Gents.

I need your advice on the above topic. I have a customer where I've installed a Megaflow direct cylinder a couple of days ago, all went fine with install. She's asked me to give her a quote to service and maintain 70 cylinders in the same building.

The problem I have is that I dont know how much to charge her. Dont want to charge too much or too little.

This is how she wants it. 1) Service the unvented cylinders Quote x 70

2) Service and descale them,will include drain Down x 70

3) Replace parts if necessary when carrying out Service

4) Call out to repair any of them when they breakdown.

Any advice I will find it help full .

All cylinders are direct.

Regards

Andy.

 

[kirkgas]

i dont know whats involved in descaling these units, time wise, however one way to score on a job like this is planning, if you do the job make access arrangements as best you can to do say 10 a day (depending on descale time) and on the pre-arranged day get in as soon as you start and get 3 or 4 draining at the same time, then start descaling the first, refill and move on to the next, when you are at say number 3 or 4 go on and start draining the rest, this is a massive time saving for yourself, it doesnt mean you slash the price right downbut it allows you to price it well and make good money, obviuosly you need to factor enough time/cost to make money from the stragglers as you will end up doing some on their own due to poor access, so say you want £50 for a one off job, you could cut to say £35-40 and get a load done in the one day, it is a fairly easy job servicing these units, TBH sometimes it is harder to spin the time out to justify the bill!!!!! we had a contract years ago to service about 100, cant remember the types, but half took 20 mins and the other half required a sacrificial annode to be checked/renewed so we had to drain these, but as above they were social housing so were all together so 2 guys ran round draining 6 at a time, telling the tenant they will be back in an hour or so, it worked quite well

 

[dontknowitall]

Golly - that's a job and a half.

I wonder whether it's worth descaling and whether this would be ecomonical? The time and money spent doing this over 15 years might well cost much more than the cost of installing a new cylinder. I'm thinking half a day (£100 labour) and £25 materials times 15 = £1,875.

I'd also feel rather tied in if I had an annual contract with so many cylinders. What happens if you're attending a different customer? How long would they be prepared to wait if one went wrong?

I'd look at a service over 2 weeks (one hour per cylinder, 35 per week) for an agreed cost. Any cylinders which required parts would be attended to after this fortnight as part of your on-going call outs and charged seperately per hour and per part(s) as per the breakdown (point 4).

On the other hand £200 per cylinder to include drain down, descaling and breakdown callouts for 12 months? This equals £14,000 which ain't to be sniffed at!! And it would keep you busy for 7 weeks too!

 

[WHPES]

Could you persuade here to have you fit electrolytic scale inhibitors instead of needing to descale?

 

[BLOD]

Be careful how you quote this,
If they only want you to descale them once the flow has dropped to a dribble
then it's a very different job to doing a routine descale.

We work in a very hard water area and descale lots of unvented cyls, most can be sorted.
In my area electrolytic inhibitors makes the scale go like slurry , and it builds up on the bottom of the cylinder and eventualy blocks the inlet leading to hardly any flow at all.

 

[Dannypipe]

So how do you descale them Blod?

I've never had to do it. Cheers.

 

[tackleburger]

I do a building with ten of them. Don't descale we are in a soft water country. Had to replace a few PRVs and a couple of expansion vessells. Easy work except the idiots that fitted them put the control sets more than half way down and three don't have drain offs fitted.

 

[rodders09]

Gents.

Thanks for your replies, I can confirm that the lady has agreed for me to carry out the work and she's happy for me to start the jobs asap. The tips you guys gave me to carry out the work are very good. Once again Thanks for your replies.

Regards

Andy.

 

[dontknowitall]

Nice one Rodders09 - hope it's really profitable!

 

[BLOD]

Dannypipe - drain down, take out lowest immersion element & wet vac the limescale out. Have sometimes had to chisel the element loose & break it all up a bit on the stubborn ones.