BENJAMIN FRANKLIN PLUMBING

Authority Brands tells you what coverage to carry. Your franchise agreement specifies the limits. Neither document tells you whether those requirements actually cover what your technicians do every day inside residential homes.

This page answers both questions. What your franchise agreement actually requires — the entity name, the limits, the endorsements. And then, given what Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchisees actually do, where those requirements end before your real exposure begins.

This is the question that brings most franchisees to this page. It deserves a complete answer first.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing is an Authority Brands franchise. Your franchisor entity is named in your specific franchise agreement — confirm the exact legal name before submitting any certificate of insurance. That entity needs to appear on every certificate of insurance exactly as written in the agreement. A certificate that names "Benjamin Franklin Plumbing" or "Authority Brands" instead of the correct legal entity fails compliance review. The limits can be perfect. The wrong name means the certificate is non-compliant.

Here is what the franchise agreement requires:

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends before your real risk does.

Here is what compliance means and what it does not mean. The requirements above are what Authority Brands needs you to carry to protect their system. They were not written to ensure the business you built — the investment, the guarantee, the income you are depending on — is fully protected. Those are different objectives. They overlap. They are not the same thing.

Submit a certificate of insurance reflecting those limits with the correct franchisor entity named as additional insured. That satisfies your franchise agreement.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing explicitly features water heater installation across their service pages. It is a primary revenue service. It is also one of the highest-exposure completed operations risks in residential plumbing.

Here is why.

A water heater connects to the home's plumbing supply, the electrical system or gas line, and the drain. An installation that looks correct on the day of the job can fail weeks or months later from a settling connection, an improperly torqued fitting, or a pressure relief valve that was not seated right. When a water heater fails, the damage is not a slow leak behind a wall. It is a tank that releases 40 to 80 gallons of water into the room.

Your general liability policy includes completed operations coverage. That covers claims that arise after the job is finished. But two things can make that coverage fail at exactly the moment you need it.

The first is a sunset clause. Some general liability policies limit completed operations to one or two years after the work date. The policy satisfied every requirement in your franchise agreement. The certificate looked fine. But the clock ran out before the fitting failed. The claim is denied. The coverage never appeared on the certificate as absent — because it technically existed. It just expired.

The second distinction is products versus completed operations. If the water heater itself was defective, the claim falls under products liability — coverage for damage caused by equipment you supplied. If the installation work was flawed, it falls under completed operations. Both need to be present. A policy with strong completed operations limits but no products coverage leaves a gap if the installed equipment itself caused the failure.

Confirm in writing from your carrier — not verbally from your agent — that your completed operations coverage has no time limitation and that your products liability aggregate is fully separate from your completed operations aggregate.

Most Benjamin Franklin Plumbing franchisees carry general liability policies that cover water damage. A fitting fails, water soaks a floor, general liability pays for the repair. That part works.

What happens next is where the gap opens.

When water sits inside a wall, under a floor, or behind a fixture long enough, mold grows. Under standard general liability policy language, mold is a pollutant — the same legal category as sewage, chemical spills, and airborne toxins. The moment mold enters a claim — as the cause of property damage or as the reason someone gets sick — your carrier invokes the pollution exclusion. They step back from that portion of the claim.

This is not a rare scenario. Residential repiping — another service Benjamin Franklin Plumbing promotes — creates specific mold exposure. When a plumber opens walls to repipe a home, they disturb existing conditions. Older homes often have latent moisture damage behind the walls. Opening those walls during a repiping job can release mold spores that were previously contained. The customer ties it to your work. Your general liability policy excludes the mold portion.

The coverage that fills this gap is Contractors Pollution Liability. It covers bodily injury and property damage caused by pollutants your operations release or disturb. That includes mold from water damage and latent mold disturbed during repiping. It is a standard commercial line with a specific purpose for residential plumbing franchises.

That phrase is on the Benjamin Franklin Plumbing website. Every customer who books a service call sees it. It is a brand differentiator. It is also a contractual service commitment — and most franchisees have never asked what happens when that commitment intersects with a claim.

Here is the scenario.

A customer calls with an active leak. Your dispatcher logs the call and promises a technician within the hour. The technician gets delayed in traffic. Before arriving, the technician takes a call from the customer and says: "I'll be there in fifteen minutes — do not touch anything." The technician arrives thirty-two minutes later. By then, the customer had turned off the wrong valve. Water was running the entire time the technician was en route.

The customer files a claim for $29,000 in water damage. General liability covers the property damage. The customer's attorney argues a second point: the technician told the homeowner not to shut off the water. That instruction — the professional advice given over the phone — contributed to the ongoing damage.

Standard general liability covers bodily injury and property damage. It does not cover liability arising from a professional instruction or recommendation. The claim that your technician's advice caused the customer to make a decision that worsened their loss falls under professional liability — not general liability.

Contractors Errors and Omissions insurance covers professional judgment mistakes. The wrong diagnosis. The bad recommendation. The instruction given over the phone that a customer follows and later regrets. Standard general liability does not cover this. Every Benjamin Franklin franchisee dispatching technicians to emergency calls faces this exposure on every single job.

The "If there's any delay, it's you we pay" promise exists in your marketing because it builds trust with customers. That same trust framework is what a plaintiff's attorney references when they argue your franchise made a professional commitment it failed to fulfill. Make sure your policy knows about that commitment before the claim arrives.

Background checks screen for prior convictions. They do not screen for future conduct. They are an important operational decision. They are not a substitute for the commercial crime coverage — which protects you when an employee steals from a customer's home while on a job.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing dispatches technicians for emergency calls. That means your technicians are in homes at unusual hours. The homeowner may not be present for the entire visit. A 24/7 emergency model is built on access — and access is exactly what creates the exposure.

Employee theft from a customer's home is the highest-frequency crime claim in residential plumbing and home services. The typical loss is not dramatic. A piece of jewelry. Cash left on a counter. A laptop visible through an open door. The claim arrives as a customer complaint. Without commercial crime coverage, you absorb the loss and the customer relationship damage out of pocket.

Commercial crime insurance covers employee dishonesty — theft by your own employees from you, your clients, or your customers. It is separate from general liability. Standard general liability does not cover theft your employee commits. The background check your brand requires does not create a legal defense when the theft happens.

The relationship between the brand promise and the policy reality is the same here as it is everywhere else in franchise insurance. Benjamin Franklin Plumbing built a service model that earns residential customer trust. That trust means your technicians have access other tradespeople do not always get. Access is an asset. It is also a liability. Make sure the liability side has coverage.

This is the question most franchisees ask first. It is also the question most agents answer incorrectly — because they are quoting the compliant policy, not the one that actually covers the operations described on this page.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing's Item 7 insurance estimate, like most plumbing franchise FDDs, understates first-year costs. If the number in your disclosure document puts your annual insurance below $6,000, that figure likely reflects a policy that satisfies the compliance checklist. It does not reflect what you read on this page.

A complete stack for a Benjamin Franklin franchisee — general liability, commercial auto, workers' comp, umbrella, Contractors Pollution Liability, Contractors Errors and Omissions, tools and equipment coverage, and commercial crime — typically runs $11,000 to $18,000 annually for a single territory with two vehicles and three to five technicians. That range moves based on fleet size, payroll, territory revenue, and prior claims history.

The cost difference between a minimally compliant policy and one that covers your actual operations is typically $2,000 to $3,500 per year.

Compare that to the claim scenarios above. The repiping mold claim settled for $37,000 plus $14,000 in defense costs. The professional instruction scenario involved $29,000 in water damage before the professional negligence argument even began. The math does not require explanation.

Most franchisees make the insurance cost decision at startup, under pressure, with a generalist agent who has never reviewed a plumbing franchise agreement. The compliant policy is the easy answer. This page exists to make the complete question visible before that decision gets made.

These coverages are not required by your franchise agreement. They address the gap between what Authority Brands requires and what actually protects the investment you made. Experienced residential plumbing operators carry them. Generalist agents who have never sat with a plumbing franchise claim rarely bring them up.

Contractors Pollution Liability. Covers property damage and bodily injury from pollutants your work releases or disturbs — including mold from water damage, sewer gas from drain cleaning, and chemical drain treatments. For a franchise doing water heater installation, repiping, and residential drain work, this is the coverage that fills the most significant gap in the required stack.

Contractors Errors and Omissions. Covers professional judgment mistakes — a wrong diagnosis, a bad recommendation over the phone, an instruction that a customer follows and later claims caused their loss. The "If there's any delay, it's you we pay" brand commitment makes professional advice exposure real for every Benjamin Franklin franchisee. Standard general liability does not cover it.

Tools and equipment coverage — inland marine. Protects your drain machines, video inspection cameras, and diagnostic equipment wherever they go. In the van, at the job site, at the customer's driveway at midnight during an emergency call. Standard commercial property does not follow your equipment into the field. A single service van for a residential plumbing franchise can carry $12,000 to $22,000 in equipment.

Commercial crime — employee dishonesty. Covers theft by your own employees from you or from your customers. Background checks reduce frequency. They do not eliminate exposure. For a franchise built on residential access, this coverage belongs on the policy from the day the first technician goes out on a call.