Charging for Urine Treatment

I am seeing a lot of pet urine jobs lately and being more of a commercial cleaner, I am not really sure what to charge for those treatments. All I have seen the last few years are mainly urine contamination from lions, leopards, and cheetahs which I price pretty high, but you can understand why.

How do you charge for urine jobs these days?

Is it by the spot? I have been charging it by the room like it was just another treatment like scotch guarding. The actual rate would be based on how bad the contamination level was on inspection. It seemed to make more sense to me instead of running around counting spots, but is that not the norm?

With so many variables, I normally price it on the amount of time I think it's going to take me to do what's needed to eliminate the odor..........if that's the customers choice, because if the offender is still there and doing their thing there's not much point in that really.

Time makes sense to me. I base everything else that I do on that now, so it would make it easy.

Here is an idea.

If you normally average, say 100 bucks an hour, then I would figure the urine work at 150-200 an hour. It's a premium service, that should command a premium price.

I've done windows long enough to know what factors it takes to keep me at my target hourly rate.

On the rare occasion I need to break out a ladder, I know how much I'm charging per ladder set. I know what my multiplier is for second story windows because of the extra time the pole work takes.

It should be about the same on a contamination job for you. It all boils down to time and expenses. I just have no idea what price structure your market will bear, and I guess you won't either until you start your price structure.

That is what I did with the commercial contamination Freemind, I nearly doubled my rate for those areas. I don't think it would be the same on residential, but I could see it generating something close to the example you presented.

I do the walk through with black light and hydro shark to check how bad it is.

Then hand them the tri fold with 3 options.

1st is topical treatment $25/area not per spot but per room

2nd is sub surface flushing and extraction $45/area

3rd is pad R/R in affected areas and treat/clean carpet from both sides with option of sealing sub floor if needed $TBD

I give my recommendation or if its bad I tell them we require at least #2

ACpower1 wrote:I do the walk through with black light and hydro shark to check how bad it is.  

Then hand them the tri fold with 3 options.    

1st is topical treatment $25/area   not per spot but per room

2nd is sub surface flushing and extraction $45/area

3rd is pad R/R in affected areas and treat/clean carpet from both sides with option of sealing sub floor if needed $TBD    

I give my recommendation or if its bad I tell them we require at least #2

That one I highlighted, I'm wondering if that's correct, or maybe I
Just don't understand it?  

In your #1 it say's "$25/area   not per spot but per room"

So then in your #2 "$45/area" would that also be the entire room for "surface flushing and extraction" , as in saturating and water clawing the room?  I'm asking because doing that seems to take me for forever, and I wonder if I'm missing something in the that process because of the time it takes to do?..........which I can't see $45 charge covering.

I used to charge by the room and I can see how AC charge a flat fee, most homes have pretty standard bedroom sizes which is about 110 - 120 sq ft and living room about 300 - 400 sq ft which if you average them out, it will average around 150 - 175 sq ft per room which is not bad to charge $ 45 / room assuming the condition is not horrible, cause some areas might just need light clawing and others heavier clawing so it will average it out there as well ?
I charge a flat rate for cleaning ( no extra for pet treatments ) but I don't do water clawing either, from my experience the worst urine cases, they always look like that the next time I go there to service them again, just not worth spending the extra time to water clawing the whole place, besides that with my machine I can extract most of those contamination anyway, all my customers are happy with my work ( they call me again when they need service ), also in the event that they call me with a problem like what happened last time ( coffee spilled turned brown after cleaning ) when I went back there the pet odor was completely gone, I was surprised.

I charge by the gallon of products used and I need to raise that price

This thread is turning out to be a prime example of what I was talking about with pricing.

Pet urine is a "specialty" service. Not everyone is smart enough to do it right (not talking about the guys here).

The guys here understand what it takes to do the job correctly.

Yet not everyone here can charge about the same for the same work. It just depends on what area of the country you live in, as to how liberal someone is with spending their money.

The national average for window cleaning is 10 bucks a window. Most of the time, I am 40% lower and I am making excellent invoices. My market WILL NOT bear the national average, and I only do work for very wealthy clients.

Yup its all local.

Thats why some advertising works like gang busters in some ares and flops in others

Window cleaning around here (commercial anyway) is $9 per window on a monthly basis. I suppose if you had enough contracts, that would be a very good business during the warmer parts of the year.

What the heck you do in the winter, I have no idea....probably nothing.

Davey Cracker wrote:

ACpower1 wrote:I do the walk through with black light and hydro shark to check how bad it is.  

Then hand them the tri fold with 3 options.    

1st is topical treatment $25/area   not per spot but per room

2nd is sub surface flushing and extraction $45/area

3rd is pad R/R in affected areas and treat/clean carpet from both sides with option of sealing sub floor if needed $TBD    

I give my recommendation or if its bad I tell them we require at least #2

That one I highlighted, I'm wondering if that's correct, or maybe I
Just don't understand it?  

In your #1 it say's "$25/area   not per spot but per room"

So then in your #2 "$45/area" would that also be the entire room for "surface flushing and extraction" , as in saturating and water clawing the room?  I'm asking because doing that seems to take me for forever, and I wonder if I'm missing something in the that process because of the time it takes to do?..........which I can't see $45 charge covering.

oh ya ill clarify a bit.       What we consider an Area is a standard bedroom size like Dp described above.     We no longer do the bucket flooding as I found it to not be all its cracked up to be.         We still flood the areas pretty heavily but its done with the hydroforce holding the gun tip close to the carpet,   usually about 5 scoups of matrix miracle in the 5qt..   if its pretty bad urine then ill go as high as 7 scoups.  

So the area takes about twice the normal amount of time to pre spray compared to just a dirty carpet,     then we water claw the affected areas which doesnt take long.      We have limitations on how bad the problem can be for us to do this treatment,    if its just absolutely horrible we require the pad rip out because Ive pulled enough carpet back to know whats really going on underneath.      

The bucket flood isnt a bad way to go as long as your not on the second floor.... but laying it down super thick with the hydro force does just as good in any situation where the pad doesnt really need to be ripped out.        

doing that treatment in a room I would say takes me about as long as it would take to go really slow and restore a hammered carpet with the 360.       Also its $45/ area on top of the normal price of approx $50,     so usually getting close to $100/area when its needed

The HG gun trick does work well and delivers a lot treatment deep into the carpet. I even go as far as injecting with a large cattle syringe that I buy at the farming stores.

With a syringe, I can get past the pad and into the sub flooring. Just grab onto the carpet fibers, lift it up, inject below the pad, and you are good.

It isn't as good as replacement, but it does work better than just a topical treatment.

Oh yea, I understand using the hydro rather than bucket, as I normally do it that way myself. It's the water clawing that so time consuming to me............maybe it's because you're using one of those huge stand on types, used for flood extraction?

ya its the large size, I think it comes in extra large too.

also ive done quite a few successful ones same way but instead of water clawing just really slow 360 passes.

both seem to work the same, 360 has a decent amount of weight and most of the time whether I stand on the water claw or not it doesnt pull any more or less water

I never found the large claw to pull as well as the smaller ones. I have every size and the spot claw and small size seemed to be my favorites. It takes more time, but it pulls out more water.

Time is the problem though, take too much time and you make very little money.

milspec6 wrote:Window cleaning around here (commercial anyway) is $9 per window on a monthly basis.  I suppose if you had enough contracts, that would be a very good business during the warmer parts of the year.

What the heck you do in the winter, I have no idea....probably nothing.

A typical storefront here is 10-20 dollars a month. Lots of 10's. I do not even pursue commercial here. In the winter, I enjoy the warm house.

Man, is there ANY biz in your area that makes money?...time to move!!!!

Davey Cracker wrote:Man, is there ANY biz in your area that makes money?...time to move!!!!

Window cleaning, and any other service outside cleaning. Cleaning here is just very low paying. carpet, maid services, etc. all get low pay.

Try that with a mechanic or getting your furnace or A/C fixed! Most garages are 85+ per hour. Dealership is well over 100 an hour.

Hmmm bummer. I have a friend in TN that does pretty well with his landscaping biz, I wonder where that falls into the service pay chain.

I have a friend in Phoenix with a landscaping company biz the nig oney is in commercial and design it slowed down in the winter too

I was in landscape construction for quite a long time.      Had a 4 truck company before 2008...

its great money,    not as much in lawn care but tons of money in landscape construction.      Sod installs were our bread and butter,     can do a few thousand sq ft installed in a day easily with the right equipment.  

Had a bobcat 440 and and 2 F450s w/ 14,000lb dumps,     we always cherry picked the jobs that had bobcat access..    thats where you really made big money

problem is when the economy takes a hit,   landscaping is the first to go.      people care much more about the inside of their house when saving money is a factor

oh and winter sucks hard landscaping,    miserable if your working and slow anyways.     Hate getting to a job site at 7am and working outside,   and when you take on a big project customers will get pissed if your not there very early...    no 830/9am business they want it done

It's per job basis with us.....every job has unique problems and level of excitement to get it out. This all plays a role in pricing, usually if its not real bad we charge $45ish in addition to cleaning....if its Moderate then $75ish....and excessive is from $100+ up to whatever.

I changed servers and computers since the last time I posted. Sorry I've been gone so long.

Urine treatment: I did a twenty-forth floor apartment which had a lot of urine contamination last week. It had been cleaned twice by another company but still smelled. I ended up peeling back the carpet (after splitting a seam) and painting each spot (there were a lot more than I expected) on the back of the carpet using a big paint brush, with OSR. I allowed 30 minutes of dwell time and extracted the back of the carpet. After installing the carpet and repairing the seam I cleaned the carpet. No odor and a satisfied customer. I charged $500. Sounds like a lot but it took nearly three hours. I have a medium water claw as well as a spot cleaner WC. I might have chosen to use either if I'd been able to use my truck mount.