electrician vs gas engineering

[Brambles]

Chem Eng. - it is wrong to raise salary expectations to a new start in what is a rapidly shrinking industry in the UK

 

[Chuck]

Chemical engineering graduates starting out could expect £35k. 10 years in, £150k min. Plumber tops @ £35k career best

According to the IChemE 2018 salary survey the median new graduate salary was £28.4k. The median salary for chartered chemical engineers in the 30-34 yr age band, i.e. '10 years in' was £56k.

https://www.icheme.org/media/14843/final-salary-survey-2018-low_res-january-2019-min.pdf

I don't know where your figure for '£35k career best' comes from but it's a long way short of what's possible:

He's flush! The plumber who earns £210,000 and doesn't work weekends

Plumber Stephen Fry is proof of just how lucrative the trade can be – as any homeowner who has faced a bill for an emergency call-out may well suspect. At 34, he earns £210,000 a year.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[aurora123]

According to the IChemE 2018 salary survey the median new graduate salary was £28.4k. The median salary for chartered chemical engineers in the 30-34 yr age band, i.e. '10 years in' was £56k.

https://www.icheme.org/media/14843/final-salary-survey-2018-low_res-january-2019-min.pdf

I don't know where your figure for '£35k career best' comes from but it's a long way short of what's possible:

He's flush! The plumber who earns £210,000 and doesn't work weekends

Plumber Stephen Fry is proof of just how lucrative the trade can be – as any homeowner who has faced a bill for an emergency call-out may well suspect. At 34, he earns £210,000 a year.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I was thinking the same 🤔

 

[Chuck]

I was thinking the same 🤔

Yeah, but don't mistake what's possible in terms of salary with what's likely. £35k is probably not far from the median salary for a plumber employed by a company in a part of the country where the cost of living is 'average'. That's why so many take the self-employed path.

 

[Ric2013]

OP: It's been pointed out to me that what you need to charge per hour =

(your desired annual salary + overheads) / your desired annual working hours.

It really is that simple.

A plumber that earns £210,000 per year? Okay. So assume you work a 38-hour week and take 5.6 weeks' holiday and want a taxable income of £210,000, that takes £119 per hour (after you've paid all your expenses). Obviously your hourly rate needs to be higher than this to cover expenses and also to cover time spent travelling, time spent quoting, time spent cleaning the van and buying tools which you won't invoice for, and people who waste your time. You're going to struggle to find customers willing to pay whatever you estimate that final hourly rate to be, unless you are carrying out emergency repairs in London all day every day.

The "Mail" lets it slide that the plumber works 50 hours a week, plus is on call Monday and Tuesday nights. So 78-hour weeks, possibly. Being self-employed, he may not even take a holiday, but I'm assuming 5.6 weeks' holiday anyway. If there are no unchargeable hours and no expenses (accountant, insurance etc), he's probably earning £58 an hour. Not all of us are up to working those kinds of hours. I suppose he won't live to take much in the way of pension, but the "Mail" loves this kind of story for reasons that would be off-topic.

I'm encouraged that you want to do plumbing because you're 'interested'. That's a better reason than the perceived money (and my feeling is that if you never stop studying and changing, your business will always be sustainable). But forget £210,000 a year otherwise you're just running on a hedonic treadmill.

 

[kasser]

OP does well already to eschew uni.

 

[WC1]

Hi KOP,

Do you think the hydrogen down the gas mains is a pipe dream ? (I'm in two minds). Roger B. talks about existence of Pilot schemes.

Cheers,

Roy

It's here.
Pilot project going on now.
I was on a very interesting webinar a couple of months ago via gas safe I think.

Pioneering hydrogen project takes first step in South Bank | Northern Gas Networks

South Bank in Redcar and Cleveland could become the base for the next phase of a pioneering hydrogen energy project aimed at reducing carbon emissions, as

www.northerngasnetworks.co.uk

I'm surprised there isn't more talk of it on this forum.
Due to electrical resistance you can't shovel as much energy into a home down a wire as down a pipe.
@aurora123 - what did the guys at electrician forum say?????? 😆

---

 

[kasser]

Can someone tell me where all this hydrogen is going to come from, once all natural gas is replaced by hydrogen?
It's not as if this gas is waiting to be pumped out of the ground. It needs to be produced using electricity and there isn't going to be enough for this + electric vehicles.

 

[WC1]

Can someone tell me where all this hydrogen is going to come from, once all natural gas is replaced by hydrogen?
It's not as if this gas is waiting to be pumped out of the ground. It needs to be produced using electricity and there isn't going to be enough for this + electric vehicles.

You make a good point. Have a look round, it's called green hydrogen and more recently turquoise hydrogen. I am not saying it will become a practicality but a lot is being spent on the research.

 

[WC1]

I think it's all fairly colourless.

 

[kasser]

I've heard of grey and blue, grey being H2 manufactured from CH4 using steam reformation. In all cases, electricity is needed.
I forgot to mention the additional electricity needed to power all the heat pumps that are supposed to be installed. Not a lot per heat pump but a lot of heat pumps.
I think gas is here to stay for many many years to come.

 

[WC1]

I've heard of grey and blue, grey being H2 manufactured from CH4 using steam reformation. In all cases, electricity is needed.
I forgot to mention the additional electricity needed to power all the heat pumps that are supposed to be installed. Not a lot per heat pump but a lot of heat pumps.
I think gas is here to stay for many many years to come.

The designation brown, grey, green, turquoise are all due to their method of production. I am a simple observer not an advocate. It seems to me that there's plenty of hydrogen around and a lot of money being spent getting the hydrogen to the right place. Gas is here to stay, what that gas is, may change, hydrogen blend is being looked at, hard.

 

[Ric2013]

I was reading about colours of hydrogen in the "Corriere della Sera" the other day. It's all colourless, so these are technical terms only:

Grey - extracted from methane (CH4) without carbon capture and storage/sequestration (CCS) - releases lots of CO2.

Brown - extracted from coal without CCS - releases more CO2.

Blue - extracted from fossil fuels, but with CCS - CO2 captured.

Green - extracted from water using renewable energy.

Violet (purple) - extracted from water using nuclear energy.

 

[WC1]

Turquoise hydrogen production has to do with methane, natural gas.

 

[Ric2013]

the wonders of cut and paste...makes everyone an instant expert LOL

I'm not an expert. All I did was summarise [EDIT - and translate from the original Italian] what was written in a newspaper article. Bit more effort than cutting and pasting to be honest. Glad you found it interesting though.

 

[WC1]

I'm not an expert. All I did was summarise what was written in a newspaper article. Bit more effort than cutting and pasting to be honest. Glad you found it interesting though.

Maybe you're showing us up with your "corierre de la sella" - closest I get to that is the menu leaflet stuck on my dominos pizza box 😊

 

[Ric2013]

Maybe you're showing us up with your "corierre de la sella" - closest I get to that is the menu leaflet stuck on my dominos pizza box 😊

I'm running a news agent's shop in Italy at present, so no great feat to have flicked through the odd paper. Not trying to show anyone up: I just like to state what my sources of information are, especially when I have no way of knowing whether they are correct or not.