Price stove cleanings so the trip pays. Free, no signup. All defaults are editable starting points.
Pellet stove techs lose money on the flat annual cleaning price. One number sounds fine until deep-ash neglect, vent pipe footage, gaskets, the igniter test, and drive time are priced at zero. Start with your bar (75), margin percent (20), minimum trip fee ($125), and season goal ($8,000). Pick a preset: Annual deep clean, Mid-season ash-out, Vent + flue sweep, or Open + close season. Each fills on-site minutes, the deep-ash checkbox, vent pipe feet, and gasket cost. The leaks card adds first-time inspection, deep-ash, the igniter test, vent pipe feet times minutes per foot, parts markup, and drive plus miles. Results show site minutes, drive minutes, labor at your bar, vehicle, parts at cost and billed, true cost, the recommended quote, and the effective rate of quote divided by your own hours. Verdicts are PRICED RIGHT, CLOSE, BUT LEAKING, WORKING TOO CHEAP, or LOSING MONEY. Leak notes tier deep-ash units, split the vent pipe as its own line, and flag drive time beating site time. The gut check grades your instinct quote with an exact under-true-cost warning; the season planner adds a service-plan card. No signup; runs on your phone.
Example only, not typical pricing. The Annual deep clean preset at a $75 bar: site minutes are 90 plus 30 deep-ash plus 10 igniter test plus 10 feet of vent pipe at 3 minutes per foot equals 160. Drive is 25 minutes one way, doubled to 50. Your own hours are 3.5; labor at your bar is $262.50. Vehicle is 30 miles at $0.67 equals $20.10; parts cost $25. True cost is $307.60. Recommended quote is max($125, ceil(307.60 times 1.20 divided by 10) times 10) equals $370. Effective rate is 370 divided by 3.5 equals $105.71 per hour, over the bar, so the verdict is PRICED RIGHT. The deep-ash and vent-pipe leak notes fire: neglected units should price as their own tier, and vent pipe minutes are a separate line. A $150 gut quote pays $42.86 per hour, lands $157.60 under true cost, and reads LOSING MONEY.
Why does the drive input double?
The label is one-way drive minutes; the tool doubles it so the full round trip, not half of it, lands in the quote.
How does the service-plan card work?
Visits per year times the quote minus the plan discount gives the per-customer plan price; the planner shows plan customers to goal.
Why round the quote to $10 here?
Visit-size jobs quote cleaner in tens. The default keeps phone quotes round without giving away the margin.
What does the no-parts leak note mean?
Gaskets and igniters are the margin on cleanings; bill them instead of absorbing them.
What does CLOSE, BUT LEAKING mean here?
Your effective rate lands between 75 percent and 100 percent of your bar. The drive or the unbilled vent pipe is usually the leak.