About Backflow Rules

Backflow Rules explains the backflow testing rules of each water utility in plain words: who must test, when the test is due, how to find a tester, how the report gets filed, what it costs and what happens if it is missed. It covers 29 utilities in 5 states so far.

Why it exists

A backflow test letter is easy to misread. The rules sit across a utility's web pages, its city code, a tester packet and sometimes a rate schedule, and they differ between neighboring cities: one requires a yearly test of every lawn sprinkler, the next only tests businesses; one wants the report in an online system within five days, another by email. Testers face the same patchwork when they work across several utilities. We put each utility's rules on one page.

Who runs it

Backflow Rules is a small independent publisher. We are not a water utility, a government agency, a backflow tester or a plumbing company, and no utility, tester or company pays to appear here. We don't give legal advice: we report what each utility's own rules say.

How it is paid for

The site may show ads from Google AdSense. Ads never decide what we publish or how a utility is described, and we don't take payments from testers or utilities. See our privacy policy for what ads and analytics collect.

How we check

Every fact comes from the utility's own pages, forms or code, or from the state's rules, and each section of a utility page shows its source and the date we checked it. When a utility doesn't say something, we leave it out. More on how we check.

Contact

Found a mistake or a rule that changed? Write to [email protected] or use the contact page. For your own account, test or deadline, contact your water utility: we can't see or change your records.