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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.
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
