Six engineers, four vans, and nobody we have not trained ourselves

Why the name is not ours

People ask this a lot. Ray retired in 2021 and I bought the firm off him. I could have put my own name over the door and plenty of people told me to. I did not, because half of Bishopston still rings up and asks for Ray’s lot, and the name is the reason they ring at all. Thirty years of somebody turning up when they said they would is worth more than my surname on a van.

How we price, and why we publish it

The standard model in this trade is to refuse to give a number until somebody has been to your house, because once an engineer has spent an hour with you it is awkward to say no. It works. It is also a slightly grubby way to earn a living.

So we publish. Every job we do regularly has a starting price on the pricing page. You can work out roughly what you are in for before you ever speak to us, which means the survey is about the job rather than about closing you.

The second half of that is the fixed price. After the survey you get one written figure. If we misjudge the job, if the pipework behind the old boiler turns out to be a horror show, if it takes an extra day, that comes out of our margin and not your bill. We get it wrong perhaps twice a year. Twice a year is a fair price for never having an awkward conversation on somebody’s kitchen floor.

What we will talk you out of

We will tell you not to replace a boiler that has a few good years left. We will tell you a powerflush is a waste of money on a clean system. We will tell you your house is not ready for a heat pump if it is not, even though a heat pump is a far bigger invoice than a combi swap.

This is not principle so much as arithmetic. Most of our work comes from people who used us before, or from somebody they told. That only keeps working if the advice is straight.

The apprenticeship

We have taken on an apprentice every other year since 2014. Beth came through it and is now one of our two heat pump qualified engineers. It is slower and more expensive than hiring somebody already trained, and it is the reason we have never had to put a subcontractor in a customer’s house.