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What the Annual Test Actually Is
It takes about twenty minutes, it produces a piece of paper, and the piece of paper is most of the point.
Key point
A backflow test isolates the assembly and connects a calibrated differential gauge to its test cocks, to establish whether each check valve holds and at what differential the relief opens. It is normally restricted to certified testers, and the report usually has to reach your water purveyor.
Source: U.S. EPA, Cross-Connection Control Manual, EPA 816-R-03-002, February 2003.
What happens on site
The assembly is isolated, and a calibrated differential gauge is connected to the test cocks on the body. The tester establishes whether each check valve holds against a pressure difference and, on a reduced pressure assembly, at what differential the relief opens.
Water is off to whatever is downstream while that happens, which is worth knowing in advance if the building cannot lose supply without notice.
Who can do it
Testing is normally restricted to testers holding a specific certification and using calibrated equipment, and EPA’s manual recommends exactly that: regular testing by qualified personnel with calibrated gauges.
The certification and the gauge calibration are both things to ask about, because a report from an uncertified tester or an uncalibrated gauge is a report your purveyor may not accept.
Source: U.S. EPA, Cross-Connection Control Manual, EPA 816-R-03-002, February 2003.
Where the report goes
Usually to the water purveyor, and often on a form they specify. That follows directly from what containment is for: the purveyor is the party the device protects, so the purveyor is the party that wants evidence it works.
Ask who files it. A test that happened and was never filed is, administratively, a test that did not happen.
How often
The manual does not prescribe an interval. It stresses ongoing surveillance, and it is explicit that air gaps must be inspected as frequently as mechanical backflow preventers.
The binding interval is set by your state or local requirements and by your purveyor’s program. Annual is common. Common is not the same as universal, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
If it fails
Then it is a repair or a replacement, and a retest. Assemblies are rebuildable and a failure is frequently a seat or a rubber part rather than the whole body.
Ask what failed and at what differential. That tells you whether you are looking at a part, a maintenance pattern or an assembly at the end of its life, and it is information a tester already has written down.
Know what is on the tag before you call.Make, model, size and the date of the last test are usually stamped or tagged on the assembly itself, and they decide which test kit and which paperwork the visit needs. We will route you to somebody who covers your area, selected on the ZIP code of the property, and you are never charged. Backflow is our specialty, though the number will take any plumbing request on the property.
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