Installing Systems Bought Elsewhere [RE-wrenches]

[Allan Sindelar]

Tom Lane and Fellow Wrenches,

Tom, you posted the excerpt below back on 2/25/01. I saved it because it had
good advice, and recently came across it. The last paragraph, about
installing equipment bought elsewhere, led me to some questions. This also
seems like a relevant topic for all of us, so I'm asking it here.

We generally offer a year's general warranty on our design and installation
work. We cover labor (and travel on jobs not too far away) on warranted
product failures during this initial year as well. This is satisfactory in
general to our customers, and in most cases there are no warranty trips
necessary.

We also have a general policy that we won't install equipment bought
elsewhere. Partly, this is to encourage customers to buy their hardware from
us, as good business policy. We bend this policy on a case-by-case basis,
generally with a disclaimer that reads, in its most formal contract/proposal
wording, as: "We honor all manufacturers' warranties and will repair or
replace defective components according to each manufacturer's stated
warranty terms. Our installation work is generally guaranteed for one year
against failures due to our error. During this year, we will also cover
labor [we sometimes add (but not travel)] on warranted product failures.
However, we will only assume product warranty service liability for those
products that we have both supplied and installed. This applies both to
manufacturers' product warranties and to our standard one-year warranty on
installation work performed. Positive Energy is not liable for any warranty
coverage for equipment not provided by us, whether or not we install that
equipment."

But we all know that the last person who works on a system gets blamed for
anything that goes wrong.

1. How do you deal with followup and warranty support when you install
equipment you didn't sell?
2. How do you protect yourself when something breaks that you installed but
didn't sell? What if it damages something else that you supplied?
3. What if the client claims that faulty installation caused the problem?
4. What happens when it's apparent that the equipment set is poorly matched,
or you suspect that the finished system isn't a good match for the
customer's application? Human nature and ego are at work here, both yours
and the customer's. What do you advise? Do you add missing pieces? Do you
just install hardware supplied, even if you know it won't work well in the
system? If not, and you sell part of a system (the part that makes it work
well) when and how do you warrant overall performance? (For example, we once
had to analyze and rebuild a system with a DR2424, an LED voltmeter and
forty golf cart batteries that had crashed three months after installation.)

Looking for discussion here to help us all...
Thanks,
Allan at Positive Energy
Tom Lane on How to Charge for Design and Installation

I am in total disagreement that contractors and wrenches who work for a
living for their families should give away their time and knowledge to the
"uneducated public". No other profession gives away their time and knowledge
for free. Solar hot water and solar pool heating systems are simple systems
with basic rules of thumb that enable you to give a consumer rough cost
estimates and free job surveys and quotes. Not so with solar electric
systems. Read Bob-O's & Richard Perez's article in Home Power #81 on what to
expect from a professional solar electric contractor.

Our Fees

ECS charges $500 to $2000 to custom design and specify all the equipment
with price breakdowns that include labor. If some pilgrim wants to take our
list and shop the internet or call a discounter advertising in Home Power
that's fine. I've been paid for providing an education and a shopping list.

If you don't value your time, no one else will. We typically refund half of
our design time charge, if the customer buys the system as specified. If
they bring a shopping list and want a quote that's different. Some of you
new contractors don't know how many professional engineering firms will take
advantage of you to quote or do their design work for them - that they're
getting paid for!

We provide basic educational brochures and information for free to people to
gain a basic understanding. We teach courses each semester at our local
community college for the beginning pilgrim. We all do missionary work at
trade shows, etc.

When someone buys the equipment and wants us to install it for them, we're
glad to charge them by the hour for our labor. It's pure profit when you
charge by the hour for a crew. They pay for all the time it takes, holding
us up driving or taking a boat or plane back to the mainland to get parts or
dealing with defective equipment. All the normal glitches a professional
runs into costs the client money instead of our loss of profit when we run
into Murphy's Law.

Tom Lane

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