How does your contract specify the handling of change-orders?

This is what our contract says about change orders:

"If any changes, alterations or additions requested by the Purchaser result in additional cost in the construction of the house as set forth in Paragraph One (1), hereof then Purchaser shall pay said additional cost at the time the changes, alterations or additions are ordered and accepted by Seller."

In cases like this, does the buyer have any power to negotiate and protect himself against price gouging? What makes me upset is that there was nothing in our spec sheet specifying that we could only have one shower head and valve per shower and that there would even be an upcharge on additional hardware.

Lots of plumbers charge a fixed rate per fixture for new construction. If you add up all your fixtures like this

• sink
• toilet
• shower
• washing machine
• dishwasher
• etc

How many fixtures do you have?

Lets say you have 20 all day. You might find your plumbing cost is $20,000.00 - this includes all pipe and labour. All pipe fittings and the like. Not fixtures and trims. Here the plumber is using a flat rate of $1,000.00 per fixture.

How does yours calculate?

My plumber is $1200 per fixture that is in Mpls/st paul area..

"that there was nothing in our spec sheet specifying that we could only have one shower head and valve per shower"

Sounds like there was nothing in the specifications about more than one, so that's almost certainly how it was priced. The CO should be done in advance of the change, giving you an opportunity to accept or reject the charge, not after the work is started. It will cost a lot more to retrofit, so chalk it up to small lessons learned at this point. The more complete the specifications and drawings are, in my experience, the fewer the bad surprises.

Something around $1K/fixture seems pretty typical in the primary estimate, work done under COs is almost always more expensive.

Thank you all for your comments. The update: after talking to the builder, he revealed that he initially thought we were getting body sprays. He agreed that the charge for the extra shower head should be less than what he initially quoted, and he brought the price down to $900, which is an easier pill to swallow.