Backflow Testing Is a Deadline, and a Plumbing Contractor Should Own It

The test is ninety dollars of work that most commercial plumbing contractors resent. The date attached to it’s the most valuable thing in the building, because it’s a standing reason to be in the mechanical room every year that nobody has to be sold on.

A commercial plumbing contractor runs a backflow test at an office park, fills in the form, submits it to the water utility, and invoices a figure that barely covers the drive. Low margin, mildly irritating, done.

Four months later a different contractor replaces the domestic water heater bank in the same mechanical room. Nobody was outsold. The second contractor was simply in the room more recently, and had a reason to be there that didn’t sound like selling.

In short

• The test is the commodity. The renewal date is the asset, and almost nobody is tracking it on the building’s behalf.
• Missing it’s not a paperwork problem for the owner. The water utility can shut the building off until it’s resolved.
• The visit puts you in the mechanical room once a year, standing next to everything else that’s going to fail.

Why the date matters more than the test

Commercial plumbing work arrives two ways. Something breaks and somebody calls whoever they called last time, or a project gets budgeted and goes out to a few contractors. Both of those are events you don’t control.

A compliance date is different. It arrives on a schedule and it belongs to the property. The person responsible for it usually has it written down nowhere except a folder they won’t open until a notice turns up. Track that date across forty buildings and you have forty scheduled conversations a year, each one opening with a service instead of a pitch.

That’s the whole argument. The work itself is worth very little. The calendar position is worth a great deal.

What the deadline requires

The requirements are set locally, by the water purveyor under state authority, so the specifics vary. Washington’s rule is representative and it’s published in full, which makes it a useful thing to be able to describe accurately on a walkthrough.

Testing happens at installation, after repair or relocation, after an incident, and “annually thereafter, unless the purveyor requires more frequent testing for high hazard premises or for assemblies that repeatedly fail.” So the interval isn’t always twelve months, and a building with an assembly that has failed before may be on a shorter clock than its manager assumes.

The part worth knowing is what happens when the date passes. The rule directs the purveyor to take corrective action where a consumer “fails to comply with the purveyor’s requirements regarding the installation, inspection, testing, maintenance or repair of approved backflow preventers”, and that action “may include, but is not limited to: Denying or discontinuing water service to a consumer’s premises until the cross-connection hazard is eliminated or controlled.”

Tell a property manager a missed test is a filing problem and it goes to the bottom of the list. Tell them the utility can close the building and the date moves up. So does their opinion of whoever told them.

What it looks like to own that date

The last row is the one that opens doors. It’s a question about a legal obligation the building already has, which makes it one of the few cold openings that doesn’t sound like a cold opening.

The walk you’re already being paid for

The assembly is rarely alone. Everything else in that room is in front of you for as long as the test takes. You’re there legitimately, with the manager’s knowledge, at their invitation.

Ten minutes of attention produces a short list. Water heater age off the nameplate. Whether the expansion tank is still doing anything. Corrosion at the connections. Insulation that has been off the lines for years. A mixing valve nobody has adjusted since the building opened. None of that’s a pitch. It’s a record of what is in the room, dated.

Leave it as one page. Put a range against anything that costs money and a line saying what is fine. Next year you write the same page, and the two together become a trend. No competitor arriving cold can produce that.

What to say to get the next building

Property managers hold portfolios. The one you just helped almost certainly has others, and the obligation applies at every one of them.

That question works because it’s genuinely useful and because it costs the manager nothing to answer honestly. Most of them are tracking it in their head across several buildings, and would rather not be.

When it’s not worth chasing

Some buildings have a plumbing contractor they have used for fifteen years and no reason to change. Some portfolios run backflow testing through a national vendor on a contract you can’t displace on price. Both are common, and neither is worth a campaign.

The date is still worth asking about, because the answer tells you which situation you’re in inside one sentence. When nobody at the building can tell you when the test is due, nobody is tracking it, and that is the building to work.

How this turns into commercial plumbing contracts

One test is not a business. A list of them is. A contractor who tracks renewal dates across a dozen buildings has a schedule that fills itself, and a reason to be in each of those mechanical rooms every year.

That is also how commercial plumbing contracts tend to start. The service agreement conversation is far easier when you are already the company filing their backflow paperwork, because you are not asking them to trust somebody new with the building.

The hard part is getting the first one. Property and facility managers are not searching for a plumbing contractor until something has failed, so the work goes to whoever made contact before that.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do commercial plumbing contractors get more work?

Largely through property and facility managers who already know them. Compliance work with a fixed annual date, such as backflow testing, is one of the few ways to get into a building on a schedule rather than waiting for a failure.

Is cold calling worth it for a commercial plumbing company?

It still works for this buyer, because facility and operations people are reachable by phone and rarely respond to email from companies they do not know. What has changed is that it takes consistent volume over months, which is where most contractors run out of time.

Should a plumbing contractor hire a salesperson or outsource appointment setting?

The in-house comparison is not a salary against a retainer. It is salary plus payroll taxes, benefits, software, ramp time and somebody to manage them. Outsourcing trades that for a fixed monthly cost and a faster start. Which is right depends on whether you can keep a salesperson busy and managed.

Keep going

• Getting a commercial plumbing call past the front desk
• What to say when you cold call a facility manager
• Outsourced SDR services
• Cold calling services
• When commercial building budgets are actually set

About this article

Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial plumbing contractors and the wider trades, and the patterns here come from that calling.