The cheapest quotation is rarely the cheapest house to run. Enter up to three bids with their CAPEX, energy draw, maintenance budget, spare-parts allowance and lead time, and this tool restates each one as a total cost of ownership over your chosen horizon — normalised per bird place and per bird place per year.
Use one currency throughout. Escalation applies to energy, maintenance and spares; the discount rate is used only for the present-value row.
Normalised lifecycle comparison
Enter at least a quoted CAPEX to see the 10-year view.
Indicative planning aid only. The figures are your own inputs restated on a common basis; they are not quotations, valuations, energy audits or engineering advice, and the tool does not recommend a supplier. HatchMatch is an independent procurement platform and is not a manufacturer, EPC contractor or lender.
What to ask each bidder for
—Connected load per house and expected annual kWh per bird place at your design conditions.
—Recommended annual maintenance budget, stated as a percentage of equipment value or an absolute figure.
—A priced first-year and steady-state spare-parts list, not just a promise of availability.
—Ex-works and delivered lead time in weeks, with the milestone each date is measured from.
—Expected service life and replacement interval for fans, pads, heaters, motors and controllers.
—Whether efficiency figures are measured at working static pressure or at free air.
Poultry houses run for a decade or more, and fans, heaters, controllers and drinker lines differ widely in energy draw and service demand. A cheaper quotation with higher electricity and maintenance cost can end up more expensive well before the first equipment replacement. Restating both offers as CAPEX plus operating cost over the same horizon shows which one is actually cheaper to own.
Ten years is a common planning horizon for housing equipment, because it usually covers at least one major service interval without assuming a full rebuild. Shorter horizons favour low-CAPEX offers; longer horizons favour efficient equipment. Run both if the two bids differ a lot in efficiency.
Take the difference in weeks between the fastest and the slowest bid and multiply it by what an idle bird place costs you per week — either lost gross margin on delayed placements or financing carried without revenue. Enter that figure once and the tool applies it only to the delay beyond the fastest offer.
No. Lifecycle cost is one input. References, service coverage in your country, spare-part availability, engineering fit to your climate and contractual terms all sit outside the arithmetic. The calculator normalises the money and leaves the award decision with you.
Ask each supplier in the RFQ for connected load and expected annual kWh per bird place at your design conditions, plus a recommended annual maintenance and spare-parts budget. If a bidder will not state them, use your own figure for both offers and note the assumption rather than leaving one bid blank.
