The travelling gas engineer

[Gasman87]

Hi all,

I'm a well qualified and experienced gas engineer who jacked it all in a couple of years ago to retrain as an English teacher in order to travel the world. Due to family commitments in the UK, I'm now looking at how logical it would be to combine travelling for 5 or 6 months with self employed work over the UK's colder months.

What do you think the yearly work related cost would be to do this? (Van lease, gas register, insurance etc)

I've only ever worked for companies so I'm pretty unfamiliar with the outgoings of self employment.

 

[Mike Jackson]

Not very practical to go it alone like this. How will you get and maintain a customer base? You'll have to start from scratch every year. It's hard enough keeping customers when you go away for a couple of weeks, let alone 6 months. Things like insurance, gas safe etc. would be an annual cost so your running costs would be twice that of other engineers for the months you work.

Perhaps you could find a company willing to take you on on a seasonal basis to cover the busier winter months or perhaps sub to a company over the winter months.

 

[Gasman87]

Hi Mike,

Yes I was thinking along the lines of sub-contracting for a company over the winter months, I've worked along side sub-contractors who have done this, however I didn't quiz them over the financial side of it. I know that they had to fund their own van (many leased theirs), fuel, gas safe registration and PL insurance, not sure what else though.

It would be great to see if any current self employed people can give me a ball ark figure on what they think this would cost me yearly, excluding fuel as I know this could be anything.

 

[kris]

Yeh, good advice from mike there, it would be really hard to build a customer base and for instance advertising costs would be high because youd have to do it in so many areas, but the seasonal thing is a great idea,,

 

[bright spark]

I think if ye kept any of you old friends numbers from when you were last in the game. Ring around it might suit someone to have you at that time. Otherwise go back to work for someone and full time, just don't tell them that you intend to leave after the 6 months

 

[Deleted member 25704]

Hi all,

I'm a well qualified and experienced gas engineer who jacked it all in a couple of years ago to retrain as an English teacher in order to travel the world. Due to family commitments in the UK, I'm now looking at how logical it would be to combine travelling for 5 or 6 months with self employed work over the UK's colder months.

What do you think the yearly work related cost would be to do this? (Van lease, gas register, insurance etc)

I've only ever worked for companies so I'm pretty unfamiliar with the outgoings of self employment.

Forget going on the tools in UK, the money has dropped to less than you get for teaching. Thus, aim to get some work in the Further Education sector as a functional skills instructor with specialism in plumbing/gas. Colleges are recruiting English and Maths teachers, with golden handshakes for the latter. This way, you may be on a zero hour contract, but you are not buying your work.

 

[iain85]

I reckon you could get by fairly well by sub contracting. By a cheap van, pay all insurances monthly. Also you have the added benefit of not paying tax if your out the uk for over 6 months of the year so fill your boots.
I would love to do this! Good luck to you.

 

[newcastle phill]

Youd be best tarmac'ing driveways.
The gyphogs do ok

 

[Gasman87]

Thanks for all the replies, I was really after some info regarding the financial outgoings of going it alone though.

I know that I'll easily be able to find sufficient work sub contracting over the colder months therefore I wouldn't require private work.

Can anyone give me an idea of how much this would cost yearly?

 

[gasmanrob]

Gas safe registration is about £400 and something for your initial joining fee (I think) and assuming your qualifications haven't expired. Although £270 is in my head for some reason.

public liability insurance £150-£500 depending on your cover and building scope

van don't lease as you're in a contract for years either buy and sell or long term hire. I'm sure someone in here has said norflex were doing a nv200 for £15 a day on a rolling hire.

tools are a big spend. I'm guessing you still have hand tools but you'll need an analyser to set up and test most things these days. And power tools.

 

[stevetheplumber]

depends what you want in london you can get £19 a service or 19 per hour on breakdowns doing housing association work as a subby