Tradespeople and business therewith

[puzzlement]

I hope home maintainence 101 is on-topic enough here: I couldn't find a sister community that looked more suitable.

My overall situation: I live with a partner and our baby in an apartment on which we are mortgagers. We've had it for some years. We live in a metropolitan area of Australia.

We need to get some fairly elementary electrical work done and I have no idea how to commission it!I feel like everyone else received a "how to be an adult" book that included this and I just missed out totally. Some of my friends have renovated! More than once!

The work we need done is twofold: we need a powerpoint fixed and we need our bathroom exhaust fan replaced. Just to head off one suggestion at the pass: this is a small building, and does not employ a full time manager or similar, or have a service that organises tradespeople for residents. Under strata title in Australia they maintain the common areas including common walls, we maintain the interior. Also, in Australia licensed electricians have to do electrical work, you can't maintain your own wiring. (And even if it was legal, I'm not competent.)

I can figure out the powerpoint: I go to the phonebook (online), find random electricians in the area and get them to come out. Only one question about that:

(a) is it normal to ask for a couple of quotes on the work, or should I just get whoever agrees to turn up first to do the work? Should I get them to quote, say, an hourly rate on the phone?

Now for the exhaust fan:

(b) do I need to go out and buy a replacement fan myself? I can't imagine that electricians do your shopping for you! But then:

(c) do I get the electrician to come in, tell me what to buy and then have them come back to install it? Or will they turn up and tell me I should have bought it before wasting their time?

(d) do fan units come in a limited range of sizes? I'm not keen on needing to hire a second person to change the hole in the ceiling for us.

(c) is most of the reason I haven't just done it already. I really dislike being in those "you should have known that..." situations.

Edited to add: my difficulty in getting recommendations due to not having a social network in the area comes up in comments. I'm not really looking for input into how to build one though, more in the answers to these questions in the post.

Edited Nov 2010: My final thoughts in comments.

Comments

[puzzlement]

As an update on this:

(a) I ended up taking my father's advice, which was "no one will quote on a job that small". Also I wasn't really up for making local friends and finding electrician names and then getting multiple electricians in and then ringing all their references.

This was a wise decision for what turned out to be a fifteen minute job. I realise it's potentially risky, but I'm glad I didn't spend tens of hours commissioning half an hour of a tradie's time.

I googled, and rang the top likely looking choice.

(b) the electricians said we could do this either way. Next time I'll probably ask them to do it, because we had to return one fan and get another and then it took another week to get the electrician to come back out.

(c) to (d) each brand comes with its own cut into the ceiling needed. Electricians can cut into gyprock ceilings, but they can't fix them up. So that might be another reason to ask them to supply it: it was a pain getting one that involved only expanding the existing hole.

Plus, it turns out our apartment has a shallow ceiling cavity (most do) and most fan units are really high. So that was another constraint.

The electrician told us that painters are often a good choice to do minor gyprock work (over plasters): they're accustomed to cheap fixit jobs.

[lauredhel]

"no one will quote on a job that small".

I was ... just coming in to say that! We've found that no tradie worth their salt is going to do a free home visit to quote on a 15-60 minute job, it's a waste of their time and yours. You'd probably be pushing it to get anyone decent to free quote on jobs around the $500ish order of magnitude, I reckon, depending on the economic climate.

Do you have a dreamwidth/lj group for your area, or perhaps an active freecycle "cafe" (spinoff chat) group? They might be decent places for recommendations. Or maybe one of the home renovation forums.

Lastly... yeah, we always get plumbers and electricians to supply their own stuff. Maybe we could save some pocket change by shopping ourselves, but the time and spoons input combined with the risk of stuffing things up makes it not worth it for us. Also, I figure if something goes wrong, they're both supplier and fitter, and there's less chance of awkward wrangling about who's responsible for the problem.

[puzzlement]

You'd probably be pushing it to get anyone decent to free quote on jobs around the $500ish order of magnitude, I reckon, depending on the economic climate.

Indeed, that's precisely the sum where our owner's corporation (the company formed from the apartment owners collectively, which owns the shared bits of the building) will allow tradies to go ahead with the work without sending a written quote first. Under $500, just fix it and send us the bill. Over $500, quote and wait for approval. Useful rule of thumb, discovered in a recent round of plumbing problems.

The trouble with living where we live is that almost all groups are for "Sydney", and the proportion of people in them who live in the outer suburbs is really really tiny. Questions get a lot of "gosh I don't know anything up your way, but you could always call $FOO and see if zie'll go 30km out of his way, zie's really great!" Frustrating.

We do have a local freecycle group and it has a not totally defunct chat list though, so that's good for future reference! Thanks.