This is a frequently asked question. How much does it cost to heat up our plastic oven cleaning dip tank? The answer is it isn't a lot. I have never measured it but it a few pence a day as we have an off peak meter that provides electricity at a low rate during the night.
We have the off peak meter because we have a 30 Amp AGA which is effectively a huge night storage heater that does a great job of cooking too! The cost for the off peak electricity useage is £40 a month and most of this is for running the AGA. Therefore the cost to heat up my tank is minimal.
The guys who work for us heat up at home every night and they don't complain about the cost even the one who had a card meter who worked for us last year. But I expect this is about £1 to £2 a day.
Compare this with a gas burner system using propane. I'm guessing you'd get through a cylinder every ten days or so, so say two working weeks. The cost of a 6KG refill is going to be £20 top end. So not much in it really.
Just before Christmas I was cleaning a couple of ovens in the Cardiff area and the day before I'd eaten something very spicy. I mean really hot stuff - it's called ENCONA West Indian Sauce. I've got into the habit of putting this stuff on everything but on this day I over did it a touch and then ate the lot. Anway that day in Cardiff I was in desperate need of the loo. If you are out driving around like we are you know that public toilets are now like Chicken's teeth. I mean a whole load of them in Bristol were sold off and one, in a posh area of Bristol, was changed into a house and is shown above and is now for sale fo £260K .
So where is the best place to go now if you need to. Well it's McDonalds of course! They are nearly always the same in layout, though I have noticed that the new ones have better toilets, and whilst there you can now get a decent cup of coffee. So no brainer a great British McCrapper.
Really I try and avoid Customers toilets as I really don't want to go through the process of using their sink etc as I feel that I need to make sure all that is clean too. And I've got to change my gloves and there is that time I got dog pooh on the fluffy carpet in the downstairs toilet. So best to keep to McDonalds or at a push if you can bother with the parking at Tescos.
Whilst we are talking about McDonalds over the Christmas period I went to Germany for short break. In Germany they have a McCafe in the McDonalds where they serve ultra good coffee. So McDonalds can we have this please in the UK?
At this time of year we can get problems with the water pump in our vans. Because it is plastic if the cabin gets too cold and the water freezes in the pump then that can be the end of the pump. The plastic casing of the pump splits and it is a case of getting a new pump. To get around this problem we wrap up the pumps with insulation - we buy the fibre glass in plastic from B & Q. Or if the van is going to be left for a few days we disconnect the pipe from the supply tank and get all the water out of the pump by spraying out what is left in the system giving a dry pump.
Also now our franchisees have come up with another way to ensure that the cabin stays warm - putting in a small 40W heater that you plug in to the mains and it keeps the cabin nice and warm. They are quite cheap, about £14 from Ebay.
Really for us with plastic dip tanks that is our only real problem when it gets cold but if you are an oven cleaner with a propane or gas burner set up then you are looking at some big problems when it gets cold as the burners freeze up and then heating of the solution can take hours and really you just can't get anything done, the racks just don't get clean. So perhaps a little heater might sort this problem out for you too!
This Monday a new oven cleaning company, in Bristol advertised on Living Social the coupon site. We know that this company, a one man van operation, has only been trading for a month to six weeks at the most. So one van going out and cleaning the ovens. Living Social sold nearly 300 oven clean coupons over a two day period. As the coupon only lasts to the end of March this means if all the people with a coupon phone up in the next few days and book in their oven clean then the operative will be working solidly cleaning four ovens a day for the next 12 weeks to get them all in, this also allows for a 10% fall off of people who won' t go a head.
We've worked out that the company is getting about £7 an oven clean as part of the deal. So this company is going to spend the next three months working for £28 a day! It is siginificantly more than this just to keep one person employed and to get them to one job. So this company will be losing money big time on every job for three months and at the best time of year for oven cleaning! What a crazy time of year to offer this deal!
The only benefit we can see is that the company will get paid their cut in a lump payment up front by Living Social - Groupon give you the money due to you when each coupon is used - so you get the money in dribs and drabs over the period.
So what happens to those people who bought a voucher when they go to book in and they are told 'sorry we are full up'. I suppose these people will go to Living Social and ask for a refund. What do Living Social do when they get lots of people asking for refunds? They ask for the money back. So this oven cleaning company who have lost money on every job over a three month period will have by then spent the money they got up front Living Social and will have to pay the money back somehow! I think a certain way to go out of business. So in all not the best of starts.
If you reading this as you are having problems booking in with this company give us a call on 01275 370571 and we will help you out and I'll give you £5 off your clean if you book it with us on mentioning their name.
We have tried Living Social ourselves, in January of this year. We looked at it as a way to acquire a new customer base to whom we could market and get referrals from. With our five vans we managed to book them in on a couple of days of each week for the three month period. But it felt painful doing them - I did a lot of them myself - a lot of effort for no money really does take the shine and the satisfaction off of oven cleaning. We sold a similar number to this company in Bristol and another 100 the next day in Cardiff. But did we get any repeat business from it? No did we hell! They want to pay the £20 again and they said that they'd wait for the next Living Social Offer! Did we get any referrals from it - maybe a few. So in all we won't be doing one of these deals again and really I wouldn't recommend it unless you can deal with the amount of cheap ovens you are going to have to clean as your part of the contract with Living Social.
Contrast the new company with our bookings this week - they have been up. Things are getting busy with Christmas fast approaching, only 20 days to go!
We are delighted to announce that OvenGleam oven cleaning company have committed to raising 1600 pounds for the NSPCC's South West's Child Voice Appeal by the end of September 2011. Why 1600 pounds? Well that is the amount it costs to recruit and train a Childline volunteer so that they can answer calls from children. We were encouraged to join by Deborah Meaden's recent appeal to get South West businesses on board. How are we going to raise the Money? We intend to sell oven liners and give two pounds of each sale towards the appeal.
Here are some photos of the OvenGleam oven cleaning Berkshire business launch that we did for Simon last month. We drove up to Berkshire and put up our stand on a very cold November day. We tried to give away mulled wine, with no interest, tried to get people to enter our prize draw, which went okay and we gave away balloons - which was the best way to attract attention so was our star attraction. In all things went very well and Simon got a lot of work from the day, the store was very happy to have us and we are going back again at the end of January to see if repeat showings make any difference. We had some interest from the fireman - see the fire engine in one of the pictures - when they turned up to deal with the fire alarm in the store going off.
So in all the business launch was a good experience and we look forward to doing many more next year.
As it has been very cold weather it is upsetting things a bit. Yesterday I found that the spray gun in my van had frozen up so was spurting water out the side. Also the water tank holding the water for my rinse system had frozen up but this melted as I drove to my first job in Painswick in Gloucestershire. As my water tank is in the front compartment with me it gets the heat from the cabin so this helped it to melt.
I got a call from one of the guys who had been on one of our courses to say that he had water spurting out of the side of his water pump and asked me if it was covered ouor warranty. Hmm.. I think not as I tell everyone about this and it is written in the manual, so I gave him the details of how to get a new pump.
I went to Focus DIY and got some insulation and made sure that the pump in my van was wrapped up well and then we sent a txt message to the guys to make sure that there pumps were also wrapped up.
I had a chat with our Berkshire Franchisee and he told me that as his tank was in the back of his van it didn't defrost all day. So this is a problem and I 'll have to come up with a way around this.
At the moment I am out everyday cleaning ovens as we are busy leading up to Christmas and we are a man down as Alan is on paternity leave as his partner gave birth to a baby boy last week.
Here is my video for oven cleaning Berkshire franchisee. I am reasonably happy with the way things turned out though I could have done with more light to get a better quality video so that I could have done better close up.
So this weekend we are off to Berkshire to help Simon with his OvenGleam Business Launch at one of the supermarkets in his area, so snow permitting we are hoping it goes well.
I haven't been posting for while as I need to catch up with everything. I've got lots of photos etc and I'll get them up as soon as I've got some quality time to do it.
Our oven cleaning business is just very busy at the moment. We have lots of work with all our guys and me all booked up and this is before the Christmas rush which I would expect to start to gather speed over the next couple of weeks. So if you want your oven, AGA, or range cooker, cleaned before Christmas please phone us sooner, rather than later, on 01275 370571.
Today I am going to start my third week of training with someone who is going to start their own oven cleaning business. I have another one booked in for next week. Now is a great time to start an oven cleaning business as there is still time to get up and started ready to pick up the surplus demand that existing oven cleaning businesses out there can't cope with. So if you are thinking about it, whether as a franchise owner, or an independent oven cleaning business owner, we can currently help you with both.
For our franchise opportunity we are looking for pilot franchises who want to hit the road running and offer a comprehensive two week course and start up package, with first class support at a great price. Please contact us for details.
For your first step to starting an oven cleaning business please phone me or my wife Catherine on 01275 370571 to arrange a day to come and see how we run our oven cleaning business and clean ovens. Also don't forget to pick up my free guide to oven cleaning business success which you can find at the top hand right side of the oven cleaning business blog at www.theovencleaningbusiness.co.uk. See you soon.
This is the before picture of an oven Hugo, one of our operatives, cleaned last week. It looks like its the main oven of a range cooker. The after picture will be uploaded as soon as I can get it off Hugo. So might be a while!!..
Image via Wikipedia
