Commercial Restroom Preventive Visit

Purpose

A restroom preventive visit exists to produce a written per-fixture baseline, not to tighten things. The building already has a janitor who tightens things. What the property does not have is a number for each fixture from last visit, and without that number nobody can tell a valve that has drifted from a valve that has always been that way. This procedure guarantees every fixture leaves with a recorded flow or flush result, a trap condition and a stability check, so the next tech compares rather than re-diagnoses. Without it a shop bills a quarterly visit for years and still cannot answer the owner's only real question, which is why the water bill moved.

Scope

Covers scheduled preventive visits to public and tenant restroom groups in offices, small retail, small restaurants and apartment common areas: water closets, urinals, lavatories, floor drains, mop sinks, exposed supplies and stops, and the branch isolation serving the group.

Does not cover the flushometer rebuild, owned by the flushometer rebuild and adjustment SOP, which this visit only flags and routes. Does not cover carrier or wall-hung fixture setting, owned by the wall-hung fixture and carrier SOP. Does not cover backflow assembly testing, owned by the annual backflow test SOP, which needs a certified tester and its own form. A line that will not accept water routes to the drain cleaning service standard.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. Confirm the out-of-service window and post the closure before any tool comes out. Get the contact to agree which restrooms come down and for how long, then set a wet-floor stand and a sign at each door. Acceptance: every door you will work behind is signed and the window is named in a text or email you can point at later. Wrong looks like working a stall open to the public because the visit felt quick. Stop rule: if the contact will not take the group out of service, do the dry checks only and rebook the wet work. Hazard: the floor goes slick the moment you open a supply and you put the water there, so the stand goes down before the stop turns.

2. Read the previous visit record before you touch a fixture. Pull last visit's per-fixture numbers and note which fixtures were flagged and never repaired. Acceptance: prior flow and flush figures in hand plus a written list of open flags. Wrong looks like arriving with a blank sheet, which turns a comparison into a first-time survey and hides the drift you are paid to find. Stop rule: with no prior record, mark this visit as the baseline in writing so nobody later reads it as a comparison. Hazard: none at this step, it is done at the truck, but skipping it is why a valve creeping for three visits gets called normal on the fourth.

3. Prove the branch isolation valve holds before you open anything downstream. Close it, then open the lowest fixture on the branch and watch. Acceptance: flow stops and stays stopped for a full minute with that fixture open. Wrong looks like a valve that closes to a trickle, which will not protect you when a stop shears off in your hand. Stop rule: tag it, report it to the property in writing that day, and continue only on fixtures whose own stops hold. Hazard: a gate valve that has not moved in years can break its stem or split its packing under your hand, so stand to the side of the handwheel and know where the next valve upstream is.

4. Cycle each flushometer for delivered performance, not for drips. Flush each valve twice with the bowl and trapway clear. Acceptance: the bowl clears in one flush, the valve closes on its own inside its normal cycle of roughly four to seven seconds for a closet, and no flow continues past the refill. Wrong looks like a valve that needs the handle held, one that short-flushes and leaves paper, or one holding a whisper of flow after close. Stop rule: any of those three flags the valve for rebuild; do not back the control stop down as a field fix on a valve you have already decided is failing. Hazard: a flushometer that lets go at the cover unloads full line pressure at face height, so stand beside it with the control stop inside reach of your free hand.

5. Measure lavatory and sink flow with a container and a watch rather than judging it by eye. Catch the stream for ten seconds at full open and multiply by six for gpm. Acceptance: a gpm figure per fixture compared against the maximum your adopted code allows for that class, published for a public lavatory faucet in IPC Table 604.4 in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted, and against the aerator's stamped rating. Wrong looks like recording "good flow", which compares to nothing next quarter. Stop rule: over the maximum, replace the aerator or metering cartridge now or flag it; far under rating with a clean aerator is a supply restriction, not a faucet. Hazard: the hot side is a scald route, so run cold first and never put a hand in the stream to judge temperature.

6. Verify tempered water at every public hand-washing lavatory and log the temperature. Run the mixed outlet until it stabilizes and read it with a thermometer in the stream. Acceptance: a stabilized reading inside the tempered range your adopted code defines, which the IPC sets as 85 F to 110 F and applies at Section 416.5 in the edition your jurisdiction enforces. Wrong looks like a lavatory delivering storage temperature because a mixing valve failed or was never fitted, which nobody reports until somebody is burned. Stop rule: above the range, isolate the hot at the fixture, tag it out of service and notify the contact in writing the same day. Hazard: you are deliberately running water you suspect can injure, so read it with the instrument and not your hand, and warn anyone beside you first.

7. Check every trap seal and every floor drain, including the one behind the mop bucket. Look for the seal, then pour into anything dry or slow to hold. Acceptance: a visible seal at each trap, each floor drain accepting and holding, seal depth inside the 2 in to 4 in the IPC sets at Section 1002.4 in your adopted edition. Wrong looks like a dry floor drain in a seldom-used restroom, an open path between the sewer and the room and the real source of most smell tickets answered with air freshener. Stop rule: a drain that will not hold a seal between visits needs a trap seal protection device rather than a jug of water. Hazard: pouring into a dry sewer-connected drain pushes sewer gas ahead of the water, so prop the door, run the room exhaust, and keep your face off the grate.

8. Load every wall-hung fixture with your hand, not your eye. Press down and pull out at the front rim of each wall-hung closet, lavatory and urinal. Acceptance: no perceptible movement at the fixture-to-wall joint, no fresh cracking in the caulk line, no movement at the escutcheon where the waste passes the wall. Wrong looks like a fixture that rocks a fraction of an inch, meaning the carrier fasteners or closet nuts have relaxed and the joint behind the wall works every time somebody sits down. Stop rule: any movement takes the fixture out of service that day with a sign and written notice, and routes to the carrier SOP rather than to a tighter nut. Hazard: do not kneel under a fixture you are load testing, because a china fixture that lets go breaks into edged pieces.

9. Restore the branch, purge the air, and re-verify what you disturbed. Open the isolation valve in stages, then work outward from the nearest fixture to the farthest until each runs clear and quiet. Acceptance: every stop you closed runs clean with no spitting, every flushometer cycles once cleanly, nothing weeps after five minutes at full pressure, aerators back on. Wrong looks like a valve snapped open, which slams the branch and can unseat a diaphragm you just declared good. Stop rule: any weep means the stop closes again and the fitting is redone; a stop that weeps twice is replaced. Hazard: this puts pressure back with staff in the room, so keep a hand on the valve and everyone clear until the branch is full, and re-read the step 6 tempered outlet afterward, since a refill can leave a thermostatic element parked at full hot.

The record this produces

Per fixture: type and location tag, lavatory flow in gpm, delivered temperature at public lavatories, flushometer cycle result and whether it was flagged, trap and floor drain condition, and the load test result on wall-hung units. Per group: whether the branch isolation valve held, the out-of-service window actually used, and last visit's flag list carried forward with each item marked closed, still open or newly added.

These land on the property record, not on paper in a truck. The next tech compares the flow and temperature columns before touching anything, which is the entire mechanism by which drift becomes visible. The account owner reads the flag list to quote scheduled work instead of selling emergency work later. The property manager reads the isolation result, because a group with no working isolation means a larger riser comes down every time anything fails there.

One worked pass, including a failure

Two-floor tenant office, one restroom group per floor, quarterly visit. Step 1 sets the window at 2 pm, both groups signed and standed. Step 2 pulls the prior record: second floor lavatory 1 measured 0.5 gpm last visit, both closets clean, one open flag on a slow first-floor drain.

Step 3 fails on the first floor. The branch valve closes and the mop sink still runs a pencil stream after a full minute. Stop rule taken: valve tagged, contact emailed that afternoon with a photo, first-floor work continues only on fixtures whose own stops hold. Two of the four do, so the other two are deferred rather than worked behind a valve that does not shut.

Step 5, second floor: lavatory 1 fills the container to 21 fl oz in ten seconds. 21 divided by 128 is 0.164 gal in ten seconds, times six is 0.98 gpm, against 0.5 gpm last quarter, so it has roughly doubled and sits over the public lavatory maximum in the adopted IPC table. The aerator is missing rather than clogged, which is what a doubled reading on a public fixture usually means. New aerator fitted, re-measured at 0.5 gpm.

Step 6 reads 106 F at lavatory 1 and 104 F at lavatory 2, both inside the 85 F to 110 F tempered range. Step 7 finds the flagged first-floor drain now dry rather than slow; it takes and holds water, so the flag moves from slow to trap-seal-protection-needed, a different repair from the drain cleaning originally assumed. Step 8 finds no movement on any of the three wall-hung urinals. Step 9 restores the second-floor group with no weeps and re-reads lavatory 1 at 105 F, still inside range.

References

• IPC Section 604.4 for maximum flow rates by fixture class, Section 416.5 for tempered water at public hand-washing facilities, and Section 1002.4 for the 2 in to 4 in trap seal, each in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted; the UPC parallels reach you the same way where that is your adopted code.
• ASSE 1070, water temperature limiting devices, binding through the plumbing code your authority having jurisdiction adopts, in the edition it names.
• Fixture and flush valve manufacturer literature for rated flush volume, cycle time and aerator rating, which is where the per-fixture acceptance number comes from.
• See related: the Plumbing flushometer rebuild and adjustment SOP for anything this visit flags, and the wall-hung fixture and carrier SOP for a fixture that moved.