Customer-Supplied Fixture Acceptance

Purpose

When a customer buys the fixture, the shop still owns the labor, and that is where the risk quietly lands. An unmarked fitting can be rejected at a final inspection and pulled out on your time. A carton missing its mounting hardware turns a booked slot into a wasted half day. A hairline crack nobody looked for becomes a leak the shop gets called back for. None of that is the customer being difficult; it is a shop that opened the box after the old fixture came out. This procedure moves every one of those discoveries to the front of the visit, while the old fixture still works and the customer still has options.

Scope

Covers acceptance of any fixture, faucet, valve or trim the customer supplies, residential and light commercial: certification markings, completeness, rough-in match, condition, and the written warranty split, through to the handoff into that fixture's own installation SOP.

Does not cover installation itself, which belongs to that fixture's own SOP, or material the shop supplies, which carries the shop's own warranty. It also does not decide what any signed document legally accomplishes; that is a question for the shop's attorney.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. Set the terms before the customer buys. At booking, send the acceptance list and the warranty split: the shop warrants its own labor for its stated period, the product warranty stays with the customer and their vendor, and a return trip caused by a product defect is billable. Acceptance: list and split sent and acknowledged before purchase, with the date recorded. Wrong: raising it on the doorstep, when the customer has already paid and the only options left are bad ones. Stop rule: no acknowledgment means the visit is booked as an inspection, not an installation. Hazard: none, it is an office conversation, and it sits first because every later stop rule is easier once it has happened.

2. Inspect the carton before it is opened onto the job. Check for crush, punctures and a rattling contents, confirm the model on the label matches what was quoted, and find the instruction sheet. Acceptance: carton model number matching the ticket, instruction sheet in hand, any transit damage photographed before opening. Wrong: opening a damaged carton and then trying to establish whether the fixture arrived broken. Stop rule: visible crush or a rattle is photographed and the customer contacts the vendor before the carton opens. Hazard: a boxed one-piece closet or a cast iron sink is a two-person lift, and a carton that sat through demolition gets wiped damp rather than dry-brushed, since dry-brushing settled tile and masonry dust re-suspends respirable crystalline silica.

3. Check the certification markings, which is the gate that ends visits. Look on the body, the shank and the carton for the marks the adopted code requires a fixture to carry. Acceptance: an ASME A112.18.1 / CSA B125.1 mark on a supply fitting or an ASME A112.19.2 / CSA B45.1 mark on vitreous china, plus a lead-free marking for the 0.25 percent weighted-average limit the Safe Drinking Water Act as amended in 2011 sets on wetted surfaces. Wrong: taking a familiar brand name as a substitute for a listing mark; the name is not the certification. Stop rule: no mark and no listing documentation from the vendor means it is not installed, because an inspector can reject it and the removal labor is yours. Hazard: none, it is reading marks with a light, and it sits before disassembly for that reason.

4. Check completeness against the maker's own parts list. Lay the contents out and count them against the list in the instruction sheet, not against memory. Acceptance: every item on the sheet's contents list present and counted, bagged hardware opened and confirmed. Wrong: assuming the mounting hardware is in the bag because the bag is sealed. Stop rule: a missing item stops the installation and the customer sources it before the old fixture is touched; the shop does not substitute hardware on a fixture it did not buy. Hazard: cut packaging away from your body and keep the blade off the finish, since a slip here marks a fixture nobody has accepted yet.

5. Check the fixture against the site, dimension by dimension. Measure what the site actually has and compare it to the fixture's specification sheet. Acceptance: closet rough-in from finished wall to bolt centers, faucet hole count and spread, deck thickness against the faucet's stated maximum, supply and waste sizes and thread standard, and for a valve the finished-wall depth range, all measured and inside the sheet's figures. Wrong: a metric or non-standard thread, common on imported units, which will not take a standard supply connection. Stop rule: any dimension outside the sheet is a decline or a re-scope, decided with the customer now. Hazard: the water stays on while you measure around a fixture in service, so keep hands clear of a hot supply and do not lean on a wall-hung unit.

6. Check the condition of the goods themselves. Inspect glaze, plating and machined faces under a light, then ring-test china by tapping the rim with a knuckle and listening. Acceptance: a clean ring rather than a dull thud on bowl and tank, no chip or crack at the trapway, rim or outlet, no plating blemish on a visible face, threads clean and full. Wrong: a dull note dismissed as the sound the fixture makes, which is a crack that shows up as a seep weeks after the install. Stop rule: a dull ring or any crack is a decline, photographed, and it goes back to the vendor. Hazard: tap with a knuckle rather than a tool, and handle unpacked china by the body rather than the rim, since a glaze chip cuts like glass.

7. Get acceptance signed before the old fixture comes out. Walk the customer through what passed, what did not, and what the warranty split means in practice, then sign and date it. Acceptance: a dated signature against a list naming the fixture, the four gates and their results, and the labor-versus-product split in plain language. Wrong: a verbal "we talked about it", which nobody remembers the same way in six months. Stop rule: no signature, no removal; the existing fixture stays in service and the visit is rescheduled. Hazard: none physically, and what that signature legally proves is for the shop's own attorney; what the shop banks is a dated record that the customer was told, an operational fact rather than a legal conclusion.

8. Hand off to the installation SOP and record the outcome. Move to the sink, toilet, shower valve or supply stop procedure for that fixture and run it unchanged. Acceptance: the acceptance record attached to the job before installation starts, and the installation SOP's own record produced on top of it. Wrong: treating a customer-supplied job as a lighter version of the same work, which is backwards, since this one has less margin for rework. Stop rule: a fixture that fails during installation goes back to step 7's record and to the lead, not into an improvised repair. Hazard: the installation SOP owns the hazards from here, including isolation, lifting and any energy that goes back in.

The record this produces

Five fields, plus the signed acceptance: the model and carton condition from step 2, the marks found or absent at step 3, the parts count against the sheet's list from step 4, every site dimension measured at step 5 with the sheet figure beside it, and the condition and ring-test result from step 6.

The dimensions stop the second argument. A shop holding a 12 1/4 in measured rough-in against a 12 in listed fixture has already shown the customer the gap behind the tank before it exists. The marks field does a different job: it is what the office reads when the customer asks why their faucet was declined, and a photograph of a shank with no certification mark ends that conversation faster than any explanation. Whether the signed sheet shifts liability is not for the record to decide; it records that the conversation happened, on a date, with the fixture in front of both parties.

One worked pass, including a failure

Hall bath refresh, customer-supplied widespread lavatory faucet and a customer-supplied one-piece water closet, existing fixtures still in service.

Step 1 had already run at booking: the acceptance list and warranty split were sent and acknowledged nine days before purchase. Step 2 finds both cartons sound, model numbers matching the ticket, instruction sheets present, and the closet carton lifted two-handed.

Step 3 fails on the faucet. The body carries a maker's name cast into the shank and nothing else: no ASME A112.18.1 / CSA B125.1 mark anywhere on the fitting or the carton, and no lead-free marking. The customer calls the vendor from the hallway, and the vendor cannot produce a certification listing for the model. The stop rule applies. The faucet is photographed, declined, and not installed, and the lead takes the conversation. The customer approves a stocked alternative for the same visit.

The closet clears all four gates. Step 4 counts nine items against the nine on the sheet's contents list, hardware bag opened and confirmed. Step 5 measures the rough-in at 12 1/4 in from the finished wall to the bolt centers against a listed 12 in rough-in, so the bowl fits with a 1/4 in gap behind the tank, shown to the customer before anything is removed; the outlet and supply connections are standard. The bowl is marked 1.28 gpf, under the 1.6 gpf federal maximum. Step 6 rings both the bowl and the tank clean, with no chip at the trapway, rim or outlet.

Step 7 signs the acceptance with the faucet listed as declined and the reason recorded, the closet accepted, and the warranty split explained. Only then does the old closet come out, and step 8 hands the work to the toilet replacement standard.

When the site does not match this procedure

The customer insists on installing a fixture that failed step 3 or step 6. That is the lead's call, not the tech's. Where the shop agrees, the decline stays in the record with the customer's written instruction beside it, and the return-trip labor terms are restated in the same document.

The fixture is only partly customer-supplied, the common case: their faucet, your stops and supplies. Run the gates on their items only, and say on the record which parts carry the shop's warranty and which do not, because a mixed job is where warranty conversations go wrong.

The old fixture is already out when the problem is found. Do not force a fixture that failed a gate. Reinstall the old one if it will hold, or cap the supplies and waste and tell the customer directly that the room is out of service and why, then get the replacement moving the same day.

References

• IPC Section 402 and UPC Section 401 provisions requiring plumbing fixtures to conform to approved standards, in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted, which is what an inspector applies to an unmarked fixture.
• ASME A112.18.1 / CSA B125.1 for supply fittings and ASME A112.19.2 / CSA B45.1 for vitreous china fixtures, plus NSF/ANSI 372 and the 0.25 percent weighted-average lead limit set by the Safe Drinking Water Act as amended in 2011.
• Federal maximum flow and flush rates for fixtures set under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, including 1.6 gpf for a water closet, with several states setting lower limits that govern where adopted.
• See related: the Plumbing sink and faucet installation standard, the Plumbing toilet replacement standard, and the Plumbing fixture finish protection and damage claim SOP.