PlumbingBossPro Blog — Running a Plumbing Business

Freezes, Holidays and Slow Summers: Planning Around the Plumbing Business Seasons

Plumbing is a year-round trade, but it is not an even one. A hard freeze can bring more calls in two days than a quiet week brings in five. The days around big holidays fill with kitchen drains and toilets. And in many areas, summer emergency calls thin out just when the crew wants the hours. Planning for the swings is part of running the business.

Know Your Own Calendar

The kind of work you lean into shapes your seasons. That is covered in Service, Drains, Water Heaters and Maintenance: Balancing the Plumbing Business Mix. This article is about the calendar itself.

Every market is different. A plumbing company in a cold climate lives through freeze season every winter. One in a warm climate might see a freeze once every few years and be caught completely off guard. Look back through your own job history and notice when the phone was busy and when it went quiet. Your records will tell you more than any general advice.

Freezes: Get Ready Before the Cold

A hard freeze brings burst pipes, frozen supply lines, split hose bibs and water heaters working overtime, all at once. Owners who do well in a freeze get ready before it arrives:

• Stock the vans with the fittings and repair parts freeze calls use most.
• Plan the triage. Active leaks and no water come first. Dripping faucets can wait a day.
• Text customers ahead of the freeze. A short message reminding them how to protect pipes and where their main shut-off is can save a house and builds goodwill.
• Know where the shut-off is. Houses with the main shut-off and its location saved in the equipment record are faster to handle when the call comes in.

During the rush, the dispatch board and crew GPS on the office map help the office send the nearest van to the worst emergencies first.

Holidays: Drains and Guests

The days around big holidays bring kitchen drains clogged with grease, garbage disposals full of things that never belonged there, and guest bathrooms getting more use than they have all year. Restaurants are busy and their grease lines feel it.

Two habits help. First, remind regular customers before the holiday: a short text about keeping grease out of the sink is useful and keeps your name in front of them. Second, make sure restaurant grease-line jetting is on schedule before the rush, not after a backup. Recurring jetting every 14 or 30 days comes due on the Waiting List on its own, so it does not depend on anyone remembering.

Slow Weeks: Fill Them From the Waiting List

Many owners find that summer, or whatever their quieter stretch is, brings fewer emergencies. That is the time to work the maintenance list instead of waiting for the phone.

The Waiting List in PlumbingBossPro is a live map and list of every recurring visit that came due: yearly water heater flushes, softener service, backflow tests. In a slow week, the office can pull from it, call or text customers who are due, and fill the schedule. Customers who signed up for a yearly flush plan can be booked without a sales call at all.

Slow weeks are also the time to reach out to customers whose water heaters are getting old. The install year saved on each house tells you which customers to call about a replacement estimate. More on that is in Building Recurring Work in a Plumbing Business With Yearly Flush and Service Plans.

Plan Cash for the Swings

Busy seasons bring in cash fast. Slow seasons still have payroll, van payments and insurance. Owners who spend everything during a freeze rush often struggle a few months later.

Set some of each busy stretch aside for the quiet one. Keep billing tight during the rush, too: when everyone is running, invoices get forgotten. Invoices created at Complete and cards charged on file keep money coming in even when the office is buried.

Plan Time Off Around the Calendar

Your crew needs time off, and so do you. Schedule vacations in the weeks your history says are slowest. Avoid letting two plumbers off in the same freeze-prone week. Planning ahead beats scrambling when the first cold snap hits.

Look Back Every Year

At the end of each year, look back through the job history. When did the freeze calls come? Which holiday weeks were busiest? When did the phone go quiet, and how well did the maintenance list fill those weeks? A few notes written down each January make next year's planning much easier than starting from memory.

Run the Business Around the Weather

You cannot control the weather or the holidays. You can control how ready the vans are, how full the maintenance list is and how much cash is in the bank when things slow down. For more on running a plumbing company through every season, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing business software page.