Quotation for plumbing on new build - Help needed

[Paene Finitur]

Hi All,

 

I could really use someone's help to give a very rough estimate of costs for plumbing work on a big (300+m2) housebuild.

 

Last year, my plumber submitted an estimate for the entire plumbing system which ran to £35K. This was to include designing, supplying, and fitting a ASHP system, including 300 litre cylinder, buffer tank, UFH to basement and ground floors. It also included rads to first and second floors + installation of bathrooms etc.

 

This was never presented to me directly, as I'd hired a project manager to run budget and costs (OK, you can and perhaps should blame me for this, but I did hope that the PM would actually be a cost saving measure) so I have just been paying the bills as they come in but it got to the point where the Cost to Completion supplied by the PM was way out of line with what the plumber is asking me for. So, I asked the plumber directly about this and he forwarded me the original estimate.

 

Now, I should add that, as I say, I wasn't aware of this estimate and we ended up getting the ASHP, Cylinders, buffer and UFH including design, from Nu-Heat at a cost of around £16K.

 

Clearly, it seems to me that I am being double charged (plumber is charging me for supplying ASHP + UFH, that I bought elsewhere) but what I really need to do is to get a very rough estimate of what the job above (i.e. fitting the ASHP + UFH but not supplying it + plus the rads and the bathrooms etc) would cost, so I can go back to the plumber tomorrow and thrash it out with him.

 

By the way, I appreciate many of you will probably be looking heavenwards and with good reason. In retrospect, I should never have employed the PM (although I have to say, on earlier stages of the build it made sense and I would never have got through it myself), please by all means feel free to think what you like, but please if you could be gentle + positive with your responses, my nerves would very much appreciate it! 😟

Many thanks!

[JohnMo]

Think you can look at the parts as half the job, the rest could be labour. But in the mix you have bathrooms, is that parts and labour or just labour in the quote, how many bathrooms and what's in each. Lots of variables.

 

So you have a kit of parts, assume someone has to supply all the interconnected pipework, zone valves and other stuff to make system and the radiators etc.

 

So you really need to go over each line item in the quote, assess if the plumper supplied parts or if they were free issued, what was missing from the free issue parts and were a cost adders, labour associated to that line item. Identify the changes and why

[Paene Finitur]

Thanks @JohnMo, unfortunately, the line items weren't individually costed. There were a list of cost items but only a total supplied - no breakdown.

Given the scale and complexity of the job, I think in retrospect it's actually going to be quite tricky to give a fair estimate of the work involved (for me at least) Maybe the easiest thing is simply to knock the £16K it cost for the ASHP+ UFH and associated items off his bill, to get a better idea of what it should have been. Even if I drop the £16K a bit - to say £14K, it's still a huge difference. It would mean I should have paid £21K when I've actually paid £29K.

 

The context is that I've paid out almost £30K to the plumber in good faith, but he's asking now for £7.5K to take him to up to date and perhaps another £5K on top of that! My point is that having looked into it, I feel I've substantially overpaid him already.

 

I don't know if the PM tackled the plumber about duplication in the estimate, but either way, it looks like I've been heavily overcharged. The only question is by how much..

[recoveringbuilder]

Sounds like you’re being ripped off! I’d ask him for a detailed invoice of EVERYTHING you have been charged for and compare against what was supplied by nuheat. It’s a pity you’ve gone this far without challenging it as you’re very unlikely to get anything back from him but the pm has to take some responsibility for the cock up.

[Nickfromwales]

So?

£16k

+
£30k

+
£7.5k

 

and then possibly 

+

£5k

= £58.5k total you’re paying for the entire plumbing install as described?