General liability for plumbers.

A plumber carries general liability because almost every customer asks for it before the work starts. A general contractor will not let a plumbing sub on site without a certificate, a property manager wants it on file before the first service call, and many state and city licensing boards list it among the requirements to hold a plumbing license. So the law sometimes requires it and the customer nearly always does. What changes the answer is your state and the kind of work you take on, since public work, commercial projects, and gas piping tend to come with their own minimums written into the contract or the permit.

How much general liability a general contractor asks a plumber to carry is written into the subcontract, usually as a per occurrence limit and an aggregate limit, with the GC named as an additional insured on a primary and noncontributory basis. A commercial buildout asks for the standard pair most carriers quote, and a hospital, school, or public project often asks for more, which is where an umbrella comes in. Read the insurance page of the bid package before you price the job. What changes the answer is the size of the project and who owns it, so we match the limits to the largest contract you plan to sign.

General liability covers water damage from your work when the water damages someone else’s property. A fitting you sweated lets go, the ceiling and the flooring below are ruined, and the policy pays to repair them and defends you if the owner sues. It does not pay to redo the fitting itself, because that is your own work. Slow leaks, mold, and sewer backup are the parts to check, since many policies exclude them or cap them at a small limit. What changes the answer is the exclusion list on your form, so we read the fungi and sewer backup lines before you see a price.

General liability does not pay to redo a bad joint or a failed fitting. The policy is written to cover damage your work does to other people’s property, not the cost of fixing the work itself, and the your work exclusion is the line that says so. If a joint fails and floods the unit below, the water damage downstairs is a claim and the hour spent re-sweating the joint is on you. Most plumbers accept that trade because the ceiling is the expensive part. What changes the answer is who did the work, since damage from a subcontractor’s work is treated differently on many forms.

Your subcontractors are generally not covered under your general liability policy, and their work can still land on it. A sub without insurance who injures someone on your job leaves the injured party looking at your policy, and carriers charge you for uninsured subs as if their pay were your payroll. A drain crew you bring in for a big commercial job is the common case. Collect a certificate from every sub before they start, with limits at least as high as yours. What changes the answer is whether your subs carry their own policies and whether your contracts require them to, so we ask for both at the quote.

A claim can come in after the job is done, and for plumbers that is the claim that shows up most. The completed operations part of general liability responds to damage caused by finished work: a valve installed last spring fails in the winter and floods the ceiling below. The policy in force when the damage happens is the one that pays, not the one from the year of the install. Keeping the coverage continuous is what makes that work. What changes the answer is a lapse between policies, because a gap can leave a finished job with no policy on the date the damage appears.