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Three Determinations That Are Not Ours
There is an obvious way to make this site feel more authoritative and it is the one thing that would make it dangerous.
Key point
Three determinations are not ours to make. Which device an installation needs follows from a hazard assessment on that installation. How often yours must be tested comes from your state and your purveyor. Whether an assembly is passing is a measurement taken with a calibrated gauge.
Which device your installation needs
That follows from the hazard classification, from which of the two events is possible at that connection, and from the local ordinance — assessed by the water purveyor and the plumbing official on the installation itself.
Every case history in EPA’s manual is, in effect, a connection that was treated as less hazardous than it was. A website guessing from a description would be adding to that list rather than to your understanding.
Source: U.S. EPA, Cross-Connection Control Manual, EPA 816-R-03-002, February 2003.
How often yours must be tested
The manual prescribes no interval. Yours comes from your state or local requirements and your purveyor’s program. Annual is common enough that we could print it and be right most of the time, and being right most of the time is not a standard we are willing to publish at.
Whether your assembly is passing
That is a measurement made with a calibrated gauge on that assembly by somebody certified to make it. Nothing observable from outside the body tells you, which is the entire reason the test exists.
What we do state
What EPA’s manual defines, what it says each device family is for, the air gap dimension, the containment and isolation distinction, and the case histories as recorded. All of it is one free document away and named on every page that uses it.
The other two refusals
No prices. We do not set them and never see them. What actually moves a backflow quote.
Nothing about anybody’s water. This site is about a direction of flow and the devices that govern it. Whether water at any address is safe is a laboratory question and we will not gesture at it.
Why say so at all
Because a site that quietly omits these reads exactly like one that never considered them. A reader who can see what we refused is in a position to judge what we did state.
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.
Call (888) 764-9890