Flogging a dead horse?

[whinmoor]

Just had an email through from Solar Essence - 4kwp £6,491 with Aurora. Don't know how they can do it!

I think that is more viable than the price shown on the van. I might give them a ring next week and ask if they can guarantee that price. I bet there are "extras" on every job.

 

[SRE]

I'd love to know what they say

 

[JD6400]

I have not been following prices of late so i may be very disappointed when i do look but when i eventually took the plunge and installed a 3.84kW up solar / fronious roof mount on my own place in late November last year , in the middle of the rush so ended up paying a slight up lift to get them .
When i billed myself , the cost of the install was £4998 including vat , now i had not added day to day running costs on to this and of course our usual profit margin but all other cost were there !
I know up solar are not top notch but there was kit around even that was a bloody sight cheaper , i would not of said we were on super large discounts but maybe we were ?
Unless i have lost the plot and my figures are scotch mist surly there is still a potential profit margin at todays costs/prices ?

 

[SRE]

Before I pay for scaffolding, roofers, mcs certificate, structural survey, slate and lead - I need to add £500 for overheads (phones, insurance, bookkeeping, accountants, MCS, Niceic, huge amount for fuel, stationery, training, conferences, tools,etc, etc) and £250 for marketing. Then add your profit, cos you don't run your own business for nothing and there you have the dilemna - if I miss those out the only one I'm conning is me. Easier to flip burgers for minimum wage than run a pv business

 

[JD6400]

I suppose we win on the overheads , pv has only ever been just a sideline for us and as such gets subsidised by the main contracting side in that respect .
It could have been a more important revenue stream and to be honest we were in a prime position to have made literally without exaggeration millions if we had decided to go that route but it was always kept clipped ( which some i know who are now out of business , thought i was some sort of village idiot to do so) to a proportional size compared to the rest of the company as we will never intensionally put all our eggs in one basket so to speak !
Having said that between the first announcement and the Monday after , we lost just over £800,000 worth of confirmed orders and another £200,000 or so pending orders over that weekend .:smilielol5:

All i can say to that is The W ankers !!!!!!!!

 

[Gavin A]

I was getting a bit squeeky bumcheeks about the situation over the weekend after realising that we had a fair amount of stock tied up in the warehouse, but cashflow was going to start being an issue by the end of the month if we didn't get some work in this month.

But we've now signed up our first customer of the month for next tuesday, and have 4 more site surveys this week, so I reckon things are looking up. Think I'm going to have to cut down on the ordering of pallets worth of stock for a while though.

Todays customer had been quoted £11k for a 3kWp installation by some rip off merchant double glazing company...

I'll be happy enough if we can get 5-6 installations booked in for April, but really need to be getting back towards 15-20 per month in May and June cos I don't think July is going to be too good workwise.

I reckon we've had 2 sure fire 10kW jobs probably go up the swanny because there's no chance they can get a D rating for the EPC, which is a bit gutting... largely expecting another to go the same way tomorrow.


eta... can I join in with the W ankers shout?

 

[SolarCity]

The general attitude to expletives in the Sun Lounge is a bit more relaxed when compared to the public area of the forum. Don't get too carried away though ;-)

 

[SRE]

We've had 3 enquiries today, I nearly got excited.


1st one has been quoted 19k and 6.5k. I got so excited at getting the prospect of a sale that I oversold and think I've lost it :-(

2nd one is a 50's bungalow in the sticks with oil central heating. He can't have cavity wall insulation because he's got snots on his wall ties so cavity wall insualtion will give him damp patches. Try as I might I cannot get him up to a D rating without the cavity wall insulation. Another one written off.

Final one I'm about to call back tonight, but it looks as though it's another in the sticks with oil heating.

Great to get the calls but I'm worried now about costs and the D rating even more than I was before.

 

[Gavin A]

The general attitude to expletives in the Sun Lounge is a bit more relaxed when compared to the public area of the forum. Don't get too carried away though ;-)

do we get more leeway if it's DECC we're swearing at?

 

[SolarCity]

do we get more leeway if it's DECC we're swearing at?

I think you get away with plotting murder where DECC is concerned.

 

[Somecamel]

4 Weeks on and haven't done one install this month. Have cut advertising down now to more local areas but money is getting tight. Have VAT refund coming (spent 8k opening a shop), £2k from an accident claim and a rolling reserve from paypal due to be released. Think we will just about manage our monthly overheads this month.

If we don't get any work this month this may have been all in vain and I will probably go bust.

Great eh.

 

[SRE]

Well, I deliberately haven't spent on advertising but that's because it just doesn't work for us. Thankfully some of the other installers in the area have being doing some relatively big campaigns on the radio recently so awareness is there it's just getting bums on seats so to speak.

Despite all of our rural problems we've picked up 2 installations this week, have got another 2 on the boil and I'm going to look at another referred from a previous customer tomorrow so I think things are looking up a bit but I know it's a bit easier for us because I stashed cash last year to get us through this year so I've not quite felt the same pressure as some others. I do feel for you.

My gut tells me this will turn round over the next few months, although I don't think it will sort itself out properly until this time next year and those that can afford to get through it may be ok but for my money face to face events where people can see who they are booking a survey with (and have a lovely solar cup cake) are the best value for money. My £60 event a week past Sunday looks as though it will generate a couple of jobs.

It's difficult to know when to bail out and when to stay when you're skint :-(

 

[Somecamel]

We done our first proper event last weekend- cost me £500- got 16 leads with about 6 for pv and the rest for other techs. Think I need to start a look out for more of these cheaper events

 

[SRE]

Look on your doorstep, village halls, green groups, transition towns, - in fact why don't you pay a few quid to hire a hall for an afternoon and invite everyone in to see what you've got, obviously either in an area where you've done a couple of installs or in an area with loads of potentially great d/C ratings. Do it through the parish council on the back of your concern about rising fuel bills for their householders. Local agricultural/home shows - I've only ever paid more than £100 and it nearly killed me, it was £125 lol. Best one was £30 for 70k of business at a show 10 miles away from us.

Shows are hard work but almost always work for us, we just didn't have time to do many last year because we were too busy. Aaahh remember those days .......

 

[Somecamel]

Thanks for the positivity, too easy at the moment to go into panic mode Will look at some of your ideas Thanks