About
Hi there, thank you so much for stopping by. My name is Karl and I set up householdquotes.co.uk to help homeowners and tenants avoid paying too much for jobs in the home.
I was inspired to create the site because I recently bought my first house with my partner and I needed to get various jobs done right from the start.
Our first problem was the house didn’t have a shower at all. Hot water and heating was provided by a 42 year old baxi backboiler. Whilst the boiler did just about work, it was noisy and started shaking the entire room periodically and sounded like it was about to explode. That’s before we even get onto the dreadful efficiency.
If we were to keep the baxi backboiler and put in a shower over the bath, we would also need to install a pump as the gravity fed system couldn’t deliver the water pressure needed for a shower. We’d also need to investigate the reason the boiler started shaking. Oh, and the water tank needed a new cover.
I suspect a new water pump would have been about £130, a new cover for the tank about £20 and who knows how much to repair the boiler. It sounded a bit like trying to keep a knackered 17 year old nissan micra on the road, false economy.
In the end we looked into how much getting a modern combi would be. I started ringing round and using Quotatis to get plumbers to offer advice and give quotes on a boiler. The best quote we got for the backboiler to combi conversion was £1,400 and the highest was a whopping £3,400 for exactly the same boiler, a baxi duotec with a 7 year warranty.
In the end we opted to replace the old backboiler with the baxi combi. I had a good feeling about the guy who quoted £1,400 so I went with him. We felt the warranty combined with saving about £15 per month on gas due to way better efficiency made it the best choice, and it saved us having to buy a pump for the shower.
At the time of writing this, the boiler is 10 months old and it’s been excellent!
Next up we needed to replace the bedroom and bathroom windows. The seals had blown and the glass was fogging up. I again rang round and used ratedpeople to get quotes. Firstly one of the big national glazing companies came round, I won’t mention their name, I don’t want to risk getting sued, even though it may be good publicity for this website.
They quoted £3,500, I laughed and asked if the guy was serious. He said “yes” then guess what? He could do me a “one time special offer” and brought the price down to £3,000. I knew that was still a ridiculous price, and it was disappointing that he felt I was stupid enough to pay that much for just 3 windows.
Next, he gets the big guns out and says “let me ring the office and see what I can do for you”. After a load of sales nonsense he came down to £2,000. So he just shaved £1,500 off the price in the space of 10 minutes. Most of us have to work quite a bit to earn £1,500 don’t we? I saw the guy out.
I then found a local chap on rated people, he was friendly, measured up and quoted £750 for all the 3. I snapped his hand off and didn’t even try and get it cheaper. So I paid £750 in total and he did a great job. Several months on, I am very happy with them.
I could have paid the national window company £3,500 which undoubtedly covered their TV adverts, sleazy salesman commissions and huge profits for the company or £750 to the local guy. A bit of a no brainer, right?
It has been experiences like these that inspired me to set up householdquotes.co.uk. Most of us aren’t wealthy and keeping our homes nicely maintained takes a lot of our money. I hope that now you have householdquotes.co.uk at your fingertips, you’ll never need to pay too much again.