Experience,
costs and money
Getting the qualification is the easy half. This unit covers the part nobody teaches: how to get onto real jobs in the first place, what employers actually look for, and how the money works once you are charging for your own time. Two calculators at the end will change how you read every hourly rate you ever see advertised.
Getting onto real jobs
The step people skipCompetence is assessed on real work, so until you are on real work you are stuck. There are four ways in, and the honest ranking is this:
- An apprenticeship
You are an employee doing the job from week one, with your training paid for. Everything else on this list is a way of getting here by another door.
- Plumber’s mate or improver
Lower pay, but you are on site, watching, handing tools and gradually doing more. A year of this is worth more than any short course. Many people are taken on as a mate and end up on an apprenticeship with the same firm.
- Work experience or a placement
A fortnight with a local installer tells you whether you actually want this, and gives you a name to put on an application. Ask everyone; someone will say yes.
- Labouring on a site
Not plumbing, but it gets you a card, site experience and a conversation with the plumbing contractor on the job. Several people find their apprenticeship this way.
What employers actually look for
Not what you would guessAsk any installer who has taken on apprentices what makes one work out, and almost nobody starts with technical ability. Track your own readiness honestly.
A driving licence is close to essential. Plumbing happens at addresses, and a plumber who cannot get to the address with a van full of tools is an expensive problem. If you have not started, start now — it takes longer than you think and it will hold up an otherwise good application.
How to approach an installer. Not an email. Find out who runs it, turn up at eight in the morning in work clothes, ask for two minutes, and say that you are looking for an apprenticeship or a start as a mate and you will work hard. Leave a one-page CV. Do that at ten firms and you will get a conversation at two or three. It is old-fashioned and it still works better than anything else.
Where the money actually goes
Turnover is not wagesAn employed plumber gets a wage. A self-employed plumber gets turnover, and pays for everything out of it before anything reaches them. Here is a realistic year for a sole trader.
| Cost | Typical year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Van — finance or depreciation | £3,600 | Even a cheap van costs money to own. |
| Fuel | £2,800 | Rises fast if you cover a wide area for small jobs. |
| Van insurance, tax, MOT, servicing | £1,800 | Commercial insurance costs more than private. |
| Public liability insurance | £120 | Non-negotiable. Most customers and all contractors will ask. |
| Tools and replacements | £700 | Things break, wear out and get stolen. |
| Gas Safe registration | £222 | Only if you are gas registered, and it is annual. |
| Training and re-assessment | £500 | ACS every five years, plus keeping up with regulation changes. |
| Accountant | £600 | Cheaper than getting your tax return wrong. |
| Phone, website, advertising | £700 | How the phone rings in the first place. |
| Total before you have earned a penny | £11,042 | This is what the day rate has to cover before it covers you. |
You work roughly 45 hours a week. You bill about 25 to 30 of them. The rest go on quoting, driving, collecting materials, chasing payments and paperwork — all real work, none of it on an invoice. Any hourly rate that ignores this is a rate that loses money.
What should you charge?
Work backwards from what you needDo not start from what other people charge. Start from what you need to take home, add what it costs to run the business, and divide by the days you will actually bill.
Holiday, illness and quiet weeks all come out of 52.
Quoting, collecting and paperwork are not billable.
Quote a real job
Bathroom replacement, one weekA customer wants a bathroom swapped like for like: bath, basin, WC, shower over the bath, new waste and supply pipework, and making good. Price it, and watch what happens to the profit when you get the hours wrong.
Covers collecting, storing, carrying and warranting them.
For what you find behind the old bath.
Push this past your quoted days and watch the profit.
A fixed price
A quote is a firm offer. If you underestimate, you absorb it. Quote only when you can see the whole job — and write down exactly what is and is not included.
A best guess
An estimate is an indication that can move. Use it where you cannot see behind the wall yet, and say clearly, in writing, that it is an estimate.
Getting paid
And staying legal- Put it in writing
- Every quote: what is included, what is excluded, how long the price holds and when payment is due. Almost every dispute in this trade is about something that was agreed verbally and remembered differently.
- Ask for materials up front
- On a job with significant sanitaryware or a boiler, it is normal and reasonable to ask for the materials cost before you order. You should not be lending a stranger two thousand pounds.
- Invoice the day you finish
- Not at the end of the month. The longer the gap between the work and the invoice, the harder it is to get paid and the more likely you are to be haggled down.
- VAT at £90,000
- Once your turnover over any rolling twelve months passes the registration threshold — £90,000 for 2026/27 — you must register for VAT and charge it. Watch it coming; being late is expensive.
- Keep records as you go
- Receipts, mileage, invoices. An hour a week costs you far less than a weekend in January reconstructing a year from a carrier bag.
- Public liability insurance
- Around £60 to £120 a year. If you flood a kitchen, this is the difference between an awkward phone call and losing your house.
Check what you have taken in
10 marksYou give a customer a written quote of £2,400 for a bathroom. The job takes three days longer than you allowed. What happens?
A plumber works 46 weeks a year and bills 4 days in an average week. How many chargeable days does that give them in a year?
The same plumber wants £32,000 before tax and has £11,000 of running costs. Using the 184 chargeable days from Q2, what day rate must they charge, to the nearest pound?
Mark scheme — 3 marks
- Turnover required = 32,000 + 11,000 = £43,000 M1
- Chargeable days = 46 × 4 = 184 M1
- 43,000 ÷ 184 = £233.69… → £234 A1
Note what this figure is not: it is before income tax and National Insurance. A plumber charging £234 a day is not taking home £234 a day, and a plumber charging £180 a day on these numbers is losing money every time they turn the van on.
At what point must a self-employed plumber register for VAT?
Produced for EAL Learn+.
Introduction to Plumbing — a 30-hour pre-apprenticeship short course.