pricing wood replacement

[grumpydasmurf]

How do you guys deal with unknown wood replacement when pricing your proposals?

Do you give an open price on the proposal saying x ammount of wood will cost x dollars?

Do you call the owner out to look at the roof after you have ti all torn off?

Do you skip wood replacement and just starting nailing the shingles?

[Rich]

I would say it's 2 fold. Have the pricing showing what it would cost to replace the wood and one roofing is removed do the owner walk through. I would include a sign-off sheet with the items agreed upon before continuing the removal / replacement or shingling. Always shed the risk - so cover your butt.

[grumpydasmurf]

In a perfect world that work work. 99% of the time nobody is home so we rely on cameras and piles of rotten wood. We got burnt once where some guy said "But how do I know you really replaced any wood?" and since then I say this to every home owner

"I can not really tell you how much wood we are going to replace, if any. What I can tell you is if we start to replace large areas off wood, and we think your cost will exceed $100 then I will call you and ask what you want us to do. We will have to replace the wood bottom line, but we can save the old wood for you to see or take lunch until you can get home from work."

It's too hard to do a mid job walk through unless we specifically ask the home owners to be home while we work. I know some villages around here require two inspections. They ask that we tear off the roof then show the inspectors all the wood we replace then we can proceed with the roofing, then they inspect the final project. We refuse to work in those villages because the inspectors are always late and our guys sit around for hours waiting, plus we don't like to tear off the WHOLE roof if the project is a multi day project.