Fire protection systems are, as you all know, a very important consideration not only in your city but your building or home, and an integral part of that fire protection system is the proper maintenance of your backflow prevention system.

What is backflow?

To understand backflow one must first understand how your water system works.  Water is supplied from the city’s potable water supply to your home, to your business, or to public services like fire protection, by means of water pressure.  More water pressure exists at the potable water supply than exists at the receiving end. The water pressure “pushes” water to its end point.  This is how it works and everything is fine as long as it continues to work that way.  However, there are times when the water pressure drops at the initial end of the supply line, meaning that pressure is higher at the receiving end, and this means water can reverse flow causing backflow.  Backflow will then cause contaminants to enter the potable water supply and that is bad for everyone.

How does a business, home, or city guard against backflow? There are basically five means of protecting against it, namely, air gap, an atmospheric vacuum breaker, a reduced pressure valve assembly, dual check valve assemblies, and a pressure vacuum breaker.  All of these are called backflow preventers, or backflow devices, and they are used in every city in this country.

Back to fire protection systems.  There are four types of fire protections systems currently in use. There is a wet pipe system, the most common in use, the dry pipe system, a pre-action system, and a deluge system.  A wet pipe system has water in the fire protection system, and when fire starts, the sprinkler heads closest to the fire will discharge water.  A dry pipe system is similar to the wet pipe system except that water is kept out of the pipes using pressure, and is only released if there is a fire.  The pre-action system will only discharge water if there is a detector in the room.  Finally, a deluge system will release water throughout the entire building should fire be detected.

There are six main classes of systems according to the AWWA M14 Manual. Class I and Class II systems do not require backflow protection.  Class III systems require some form of backflow protection, and Class IV and Class V require either an air gap or a reduced pressure assembly.  Class VI systems require a reduced pressure assembly.  In other words, the more complicated the system, and the larger the area covered, the beefier the backflow preventer must be.

To the average homeowner this is gobblygook.  Just know that your house is protected by some fire protection system, and that system will only work as long as the backflow preventers are doing their jobs properly.  How do you know?  Call a certified and licensed backflow technician and find out, a place like City Backflow Testing in the Dallas metropolitan area.  When it is the safety of your family and business at stake, why not settle for the very best in backflow prevention and accurate backflow testing, and that would be City Backflow Testing.