Quoting - how do you all do it?

What a lot of whingers.


Why do you have to make so many quotes for so few eventual jobs? Because being able to charge £12,000 plus to install equipment that even I could buy for about £6,000 has attracted the get rich quick brigade. The market is biased to the installer. I could easily install my own array but am discouraged to do so because I would not get the FIT and would have to pay 20% VAT on the hardware.


Stop whinging and make the most of it for come April there will be a great shake out. The customer is prepared to pay over the odds because he is encouraged to see the whole exercise as purely an investment and compares it with what the return would be on the money invested elsewhere.

Solluva said:

What a lot of whingers.


Why do you have to make so many quotes for so few eventual jobs? Because being able to charge £12,000 plus to install equipment that even I could buy for about £6,000 has attracted the get rich quick brigade. The market is biased to the installer. I could easily install my own array but am discouraged to do so because I would not get the FIT and would have to pay 20% VAT on the hardware.


Stop whinging and make the most of it for come April there will be a great shake out. The customer is prepared to pay over the odds because he is encouraged to see the whole exercise as purely an investment and compares it with what the return would be on the money invested elsewhere.

Click to expand...

I do wish people who don't understand the industry and think everyone out there is out making a fast buck would stop "whinging". To do the job properly, takes a lot of time, substantial investment to maintain cashflow, nerves of steel hwne your bank balance goes from 50k to 5 k in the blink of an eye and wages have to come out in 2 days time.

Those with a simplistic view of things have no idea how much time goes into trying to give the customer the best option available. We give our customers the most attention of all installers in our area and charge the least and many, many installers on this forum are in a similar position. What most want is a reasonable income for a 60 hour week not less than minimum wage for 100 hour week and if at the point of exhaustion you share with colleagues useful ways of keeping the standards and cutting the hours a bit - what's wrong with that?

Too many naive people think this is a stress free, get rich quick opportunity - let them have a go at it and see the reality.

Solluva said:

I could easily install my own array but am discouraged to do so because I would not get the FIT and would have to pay 20% VAT on the hardware.

Click to expand...

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

I've spent 20 years looking at the kind of work that the "I can do that" brigade have offered and it isn't pretty. Of course, there are some jokers out there that will do it for a cheap price. Go right ahead and use them - it sounds like you deserve each other.

Thanks Martin, you've not let the cat out of the bag as Googel Sketch tops the search results - I downloaded it after making my post! Got to love such a comprehensive package on free download. You certaily seem to have mastered it, very impressive results.

No problem Morgan123, hopefully you will master it and be able to generate some impressive results, giving your potential customers a good representation of how the end result will look. it is agreed, not a requirement but in a tough market, that i would hope that all the serious installers who realize this is not the market to make the quick buck (that solluva seems to think it is) this great tool will give you an edge over your competitors.

it would be interesting to know solluva what it is you do to earn your dollar? and if PV installation is so easy why you have not embarked upon it?????

Series530 -

No one here is complaining about giving a quote - as i am the OP i was firstly moaning about speculative enquirys merely to gain a feel for the price which could have been done over the phone, if your really interested then thats fine, but i cant count number of times ive been to site, spent at least two hours minimum putting systems togther and finding the best solution for the customer to then follow up and they come back with some BS story - or even worse not even take the call!

Case in hand - went to survey, its was a red hot lead as it was a referal from a past job - spent 45 mins driving to site, 1.15 hours on site, 45 mins back, 2.30 hours doing the quote - and bear in mind this guy was like "hell yeah as soon as i have the price i wanna get it done" - so do the quote in a hurry and send it over, dont hear anything, so i follow up to be told "er yeah if i decide to go ahead youve got the job" so im like ok thanks thats great - a week later i follow up and now he aint going ahead because they might move home a few years! Dont you think you should have thought about that before getting three companys out to quote?

Its that kind of thing thats really annoying.

People seem to think they have to lead you on sort of speak in order to not feel bad about getting you out when really they have no intention of engaging you for the work, or they already made there mind up, but there using you to check that who there going with is telling the truth.

I would prefer it if people were honest (and some are) and just asked - "hi, im getting quotes for PV ,i dont want you to spend loads of time on this but could you give me a quick idea of price and the different panels" and then get you in to do a detailed survey.

.. and do you know what else really annoys me - we spent hours yesterday getting ready for an agricultural show after we'd spent the day doing the day job. We leave home at 6 and have to be towed onto the field it's so wet.

We meet lots of great people but the ones I remember most are the ones that say - well you would say that wouldn't you, you want to sell me something and then every word you utter is put down as sales patter in response to the questions they came to us and asked! It's as if you have to prove you have the sales patter to get the sales - it doesn't seem to matter that you have superior knowledge to the other muppets at the same event selling 4kwp for 25k.

It's been a long week!

Pv surveyors required 4/5 surveys per day on social contracts please contact for spec and further details

At the risk of breaking in I am a new kid on the block I just wondering what suppliers people are using for their pv. Who is the go supplier and who to avoid that sort of thing:willy_nilly:

SRE said:

How long does it take to do something like this? It looks great but I struggle for time every day, I even woke up in the middle of the night thinking that the owl hooting outside the window had something to do with REC panels. I'm not losing the plot - I lost it months ago

Click to expand...

Sorry, missed this one. Its pretty quick really, you can draw a house in around ten minutes and have the panels on all-to scale from a photo and your measurements. I first used it as a quick and free way of checking panels on just the roof- so almost 2d- the modules are an object that you can move around indepently on the roof- all components to scale kind of like moving bits of paper around on a table. I then discovered how easy the rest was, you can even incorperate CAD drawings into it. It takes time to learn it (no where near as much as a CAD programme though) but there are lots of tutorials and a big community of people that use it. And its free. Now I know how to use it and have a huge amount of templates to work with its very quick.

I can get it done & sent back all done ready to pack it out for the customer the charge was £80.00 per application for me its the only way.

Better get the feather boa then!!!:sad:

@SRE, if you can find out the roof slope (ask the cutomer, google earth street view) then measuring the gable is the same as the eaves, divide it by 2 (half the gable) and then I'll let you guys all use my own idiots table:

View attachment Roof Sizing.pdf

I am usually correct with 100-200mm, It maybe down to the level /scale of data that is available from Google earth for your area - it does vary depending upon city / rural.

Thanks Worcester, my problem is that when I measure the length of the roof I can get a fairly accurate measurement but from ridge to eaves is almost always miles out when I measure the job up. I'd assumed that it was because of the slope of the roof - I don't know if I'm being completely thick or just too tired to get my head round it. I'll try again today with my next 2 surveys and see how accurate they are when I measure up this afternoon.