How should you price a boiler installation?

A boiler installation is the biggest single number most domestic engineers ever put in front of a customer, and the price usually gets built backwards: start from what the market seems to charge, knock a bit off to be safe, hope the job behaves. This guide is the forwards version, building the price from your own costs up, so the number defends itself when the job doesn't behave.

What goes into the price of a boiler installation?

• Labour: the honest number of days the job takes, priced at your costed day rate.
• Materials: the boiler, flue, filter, controls and sundries, at what they cost you plus a consistent handling markup.
• Margin: the reward for carrying the risk of a fixed price, and the profit that makes the business worth running.
• Warranty buffer: a small slice that funds the callback you will occasionally do under your own workmanship promise.

None of these lines is optional. A price that skips one doesn't avoid the cost; it just means you pay it instead of the customer, quietly, later.

How do you price the labour?

Days multiplied by your day rate, with both numbers honest. The day rate should come from your real costs, not a guess; the day rate guide walks through the method, and as a 2026 sanity check, domestic day rates commonly sit around £300 to £500. The day count is where installs go wrong: a “one-day swap” often carries a survey visit, a merchant run, commissioning and combustion checks, the Benchmark paperwork and notification, and the tidy-up. Count the hours the whole job takes, not the hours the boiler is in your hands. If the true total is a day and a half, price a day and a half; rounding down to look competitive is paying half a day to win the work.

Should you mark up materials?

Yes, consistently, and without embarrassment. The markup is not gouging; it pays for real work and real risk: sourcing and collecting the kit, carrying the cost between buying it and being paid, handling returns and dead-on-arrival units, and administering the manufacturer warranty afterwards. Merchants give trade prices precisely because installers do this work. Pick a handling margin you can apply to every job and hold it, and show materials and labour as separate lines on the quote: a split quote reads as transparent, invites less haggling, and if you subcontract, the split is also what CIS deductions and your accountant depend on.

Fixed price, estimate or day rate: which fits?

A surveyed boiler swap is the textbook fixed-price job: you have seen the property, scoped the work, and can price it precisely, and customers say yes to certainty more readily than to an open meter. But a fixed price moves the risk of overruns onto you, which is exactly why it should be priced above the bare day-rate arithmetic. The rule that keeps you safe: never fixed-price what you haven't seen. A system with unknowns, an old install with suspect pipework or a fault-finding job belongs on an estimate or a day rate, with a clear note of what would change the number. Quoting a job full of unknowns at a fixed price is volunteering to work the overrun for free.

What belongs in the written quote?

• Scope: the boiler being fitted, the work included, and what happens to the old appliance.
• Exclusions: making good plaster and decoration, electrical work beyond the appliance connection, upgrades discovered mid-job, anything you are not doing.
• Materials and labour as separate lines, with the totals clear.
• A validity window, commonly 30 days, so the price can't be claimed months later against different parts prices.
• Payment terms and the deposit: a deposit that covers the boiler and materials means a cancellation doesn't leave you owning someone else's appliance.
• What would change the price: a gas pipe upgrade, a flue run that isn't as surveyed, system cleaning the survey couldn't rule out.

That last line matters most on installs. Variations agreed in writing before the extra work happens are billable; variations explained afterwards are arguments. The quoting and invoicing guide covers the wider system, from quote to same-day invoice.

How do you price warranty risk?

Separate the two warranties in your head. The manufacturer's warranty covers the appliance, subject to its registration and servicing conditions, and the admin of registering it is part of what your materials markup pays for. Your workmanship is a different promise: if a joint weeps or a setting drifts a fortnight after handover, the return visit is yours, unpaid, at your day rate's cost. Pricing a small buffer for that across every install is how established firms make callbacks a budgeted cost instead of a bad week. It also changes how the callback feels: a visit you have already priced is customer service, not a loss.

Why do well-priced installs still sink engineers?

Because the money leaks after the pricing. A quote that took an evening never gets followed up; the invoice goes out a fortnight after handover; the deposit never got taken and the cancellation eats a boiler; the paperwork drags the final payment. The pricing structure only works if the paperwork keeps pace, which is exactly the loop Manifold runs from your phone: quote the job with the materials and labour split, convert it to an invoice at handover, take the card payment on the doorstep, and keep the record filed with the property. One more quiet effect of install work worth knowing: because the whole job price passes through your books, materials included, installs push your turnover towards the VAT registration threshold far faster than labour-only work does. The VAT guide covers that trap properly.