PlumbingBossPro Blog — Property Managers & Commercial

Backflow Testing for Commercial Plumbing Sites: Yearly Visits That Come Due on Their Own

Restaurants, apartment buildings, offices, churches and small warehouses often have a backflow preventer on the incoming water line. Many of them need it tested on a regular schedule. For a plumbing company that does the testing, those visits are some of the most predictable work there is — as long as nobody has to remember them.

Recurring Work With a Fixed Rhythm

Quotes, covered in Commercial Plumbing Quotes With Online Approval: Getting the Manager's Yes in Writing, are about one-time decisions. Backflow testing is the opposite: the same visit, at the same building, on a steady schedule. The work itself follows whatever your local water provider and local rules require, and those vary by place. This guide is about the scheduling and record-keeping side, which is the same everywhere.

The challenge with backflow testing is not the test. It is the calendar. A plumbing company with forty commercial sites has forty dates to track, spread across the year, at buildings with different hours and different access.

Save the Device on the Address

In PlumbingBossPro, a backflow preventer is one of the equipment types you can save on any address. Like every piece of equipment, it can carry brand, model number, serial number, year installed, size, location and access notes:

• “Backflow Preventer · riser room off the lobby · key on the manager's ring.”
• “Backflow Preventer · in the box by the curb, north side of the parking lot.”
• “Backflow Preventer · behind the walk-in cooler, restaurant back hall.”

The serial and model are often what the testing paperwork asks for. Having them on the tech's phone means nobody is lying on the floor with a flashlight copying them down every year.

Let the Test Come Due on Its Own

Recurring work in PlumbingBossPro is set by minimum days between visits. For a yearly backflow test, that is 365. Put the plan on each address that has a device.

From there, each test comes due on the Waiting List, a live map and list of every visit ready to schedule. Pins are colored not due yet, due now, and overdue past a 7-day grace. The office sees which buildings are coming up and schedules them before the deadline, instead of finding out from an annoyed manager.

If a building has more than one device, save each on the address. The tech sees all of them on the card.

When you take on a new building, ask the manager when the last test was done. Start the plan from that date so the next visit lands at the right time instead of a year from whenever you happened to enter it.

Routing Backflow Tests

Backflow tests are good routing material. They are quick, they happen at commercial addresses, and many of them can be done before the business opens. The dispatch board lets the office group tests that are near each other on one van and one morning.

A typical setup is one van that does backflow tests and restaurant jetting early in the day, then switches to service calls. Auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop gives a sensible order, and the office adjusts for buildings with tight hours. The approach is laid out in Routing a Commercial Plumbing Van: Jetting, Backflow Tests and Building Calls in One Day.

On Site

The tech sees the device's location, model and serial on the job card, along with access notes for the building: who has the key, when the water can be shut off briefly, who to tell. Before-and-after photos of the device are saved with the job, building a year-over-year record.

If the test turns up a problem, the tech notes it and the office sends the manager an estimate for the repair. The manager approves it online, and the repair becomes a scheduled job. Repairs found on a test are often urgent for the building, so quick quotes are appreciated.

Billing Backflow Work

Add the backflow test to your service list with your own price, and each visit picks it up as a line item. For a property manager with several buildings on Monthly billing, every test that month lands on one statement, labeled by address. For a single shop or church on card on file, the invoice is created when the tech taps Complete and the card can be charged.

A Steady Base of Work

Backflow testing does not make headlines, but forty yearly tests spread across the calendar are forty visits you do not have to sell again. They also put your company inside commercial buildings once a year, where managers mention the slow drain or the old water heater they have been meaning to fix.

For more on commercial accounts and recurring work, visit the commercial plumbing software page.