Coverage for Assembly Testing

How a call reaches a tester

We route to independent contractors who cover a given ZIP code. Coverage is not uniform — an area we cover well around one metro may have gaps elsewhere. If nobody covers yours we will say so on the call rather than take your details and leave you waiting.

The jurisdiction is a purveyor, not a town

Backflow requirements come from the water purveyor’s program and the local ordinance, and a purveyor’s service area is not a municipal boundary. One town can be served by more than one purveyor; one purveyor can cross county lines with a single program.

A page organized by town would be organized by the wrong unit for the thing it is about, and some of its readers would be reading about a rule that does not apply to them.

Source: U.S. EPA, Cross-Connection Control Manual, EPA 816-R-03-002, February 2003.

And here the wrong answer is not merely wrong

On most subjects an out-of-date local page is an inconvenience. On this one, a reader who takes away that their connection is low hazard, or that a vacuum breaker is enough where backpressure is possible, has been given something worse than nothing.

Every case history in EPA’s manual is a connection treated as less hazardous than it turned out to be. We are not going to publish ten thousand pages that could contribute one to that list. The three we do publish.

What is the same everywhere

The mechanisms, which are physics and are identical everywhere. The device families and what each is approved against. The air gap dimension. The containment and isolation distinction. And the case histories, as recorded.

Those do not change at a service area boundary, and they are what this site is made of.

• Two kinds of backflow
• Which device