Everyone has a preference, and their reasons for them.

Some sparks like to do 2 or 3 jobs a day all the time, and avoid having to do rewires.

Other sparks love to get stuck into a rewire and feel there are bigger margins to be made.

Each one has its pros and cons.

In this podcast - this is what we are going to dive into.

Toolbox Talk For Electricians, helping electricians reduce stress gain back time and earn more money.

Welcome back once again to tool box talk for electricians, Ben Poulter your host here again.

The idea of this podcast came about from someone saying they avoid a rewire like the plague!

In my eyes rewires are great, yes a bit of hard work for chases but its starting from scratch with everything brand new.

Plus you're in the same place all week, that is rare for a domestic electrician.

Occupied rewires mind you YES! Get out of that one as fast as you can - there are of course options there too. We can talk about them later.

Working as an electrician in domestic it's rare you're in the same place all week.

A few sockets

Garden lights

Hot tub supply

EV Charger

Kitchen rewire

There are not many jobs that require a spark to be there all week.

The thing is with house rewires is there a lot more money involved.

7k for the average rewire, compared to a few £500 jobs a week.

If you quote wrong on the £500 job you're only going to eat into your daily profit.

However if you mess up quoting a 7k rewire and it takes you a few days extra, you could have been earning that money elsewhere.

So let's do the maths - I'm interested to know.

Let's say you charge yourself out at £300 a day, that's an average self employed sparks rate.

So 5 days a week that's £1500. To be honest, some days you will fit a few more jobs in too, as you may finish at 2pm so let's round it up to 2k a week.

There will be more paperwork involved, more testing to do and customers to meet.

Compared to a rewire, empty mind you - even if the house is lived in. Arrange with the customer to move out for the week.

If you plan it when they go on holiday, you will be making a mess right now and don't want to have to clear up every night so they can sit down and watch TV.

The advantage of a 3 bed property would be 7k.

Materials need to come out of that too, so let's be generous and say you spend 2.5k on materials.

That leaves 4.5k.

It doesn't happen, but for 20 weeks. 40k for the smaller jobs and 90k for the rewires.

To be honest, by doing a rewrite a week, you can earn double.

Do you think it's worth it for the hard work doing a rewire?

Gone are the days when I could even do a rewire a week, using a chaser takes it out of you, and going home to shower off all the dust isn't something I would like to get used to.

But doing a few a year? I'm well up for that.

Rewiring a whole house tests you too on your skills as an electrician, you think you have to do everything from scratch.

NO Joint boxes in the ceiling or under the floor.

Testing 1.5,2.5,10mm cable too. Keeping you on your toes for when you do the little jobs.

The more you do things the quicker you become.

Then the quicker you are the more work you can do = the more money you make.

Let's be honest that's the end goal.

I have met a lot of electricians who say they love the trade, that's why they became an electrician.

I don't know how true that actually is. If I got paid for doing something I loved doing - I would be test riding motorbikes all day.

I believe electricians are electricians for the money. It's a good living to make that's only growing more and more in demand.

You do of course need to be interested in it too, have a bit of a hunger to solve problems and thrive on challenges.

You can however throw your dummy out the pram every now and again - this happened the other day….

The builder told me they were plastering Wednesday, so I popped round Tuesday to get a few cables in for the downlights.

I turned up and there boarding the ceiling, to be fair they stopped for me to quickly get my cables in.

Where did they go? Only moved over and started to put the celatex in the kitchen ceiling!!!

I hadn't even wired the lights - that was it, I packed up and left - in a sulk!

I think you have to have a paddy sometimes, it makes you realise you're being a baby.

But your best off not falling out with all the other trades, they can make your job harder, lets be honest - you are all there to do a job and you are all getting paid by the same person.

You can see why electricians enjoy doing small jobs rather than rewires or bigger jobs.

It's good being in a different place every day, meeting different people every day.

Its the cold hard truth that you can earn a lot more money doing bigger jobs.

You dont have to do them all the time, if at all.

However when you get the chance to work on a property where they have everything you recommend, thats where you really test yourself.

As a spark, you must enjoy a challenge and there was one job I did for a private developer where the house sold for 1.7 million.

Its had cat 6 cable to every room

TV points all over

2 way switching

Intermediate switching

Downlights

Chandeliers

So much more……

The funny thing is the person who bought the house asked me to install extra sockets for the ceiling mounted projector too.

That of course led o to more work for the buyers family.

And that's how one job from one customer can turn into 5 customers quickly.

Taking on bigger jobs not only keeps you busy and makes more money, it an halp your business grow faster.

A warehouse once asked me to change the 400watt metal halide lights to LED.

15k worth of lights.

I had a i path licence, so hired a lifter and got to work.

The amount of people I met in that factory kept me busy for the rest of the year.

Some jobs were just changing a light, others were kitchen rewires.

Of course I have their email to be able to keep in contact.

You never know if any of your old customers will win the lottery, inherit a house or be desperate for an electrician one day - If they have your number, they're going to call you.

So the conclusion to what makes electricians more money is a clear winner - bigger jobs.

Bigger jobs are not necessarily harder either, changing lights over is one of the easiest jobs a spark can do.

Well apart from attending a call out to reset the RCD, thats always a easy one.

Don't get me wrong, being a electricians isn't easy, Check out the podcast

Mastering the Trade: Self-Employed Electricians and their Professional Knowledge in Electrical Repairs

You will be forever leaning new things in the electrical industry

Until next time