It is easy to live your life and not think much about your plumbing system. It’s easy until you experience a major issue that leaves you without clean water to use in your home. One essential part of ensuring your water is safe is a backflow prevention system. Homeowners need to understand what backflow is so that they can understand why backflow prevention is such an important thing. Damorie Construction is here to shed some light on backflow prevention and why it is critical to have it in place.
Understanding What Backflow Is
There are all sorts of pressure changes that occur inside a plumbing system. When this happens, it is possible for contaminated water to reverse its flow direction and contaminate the clean water supply. The best way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to make sure you have backflow prevention in place. Here are some of the risks associated with backflow problems:
– Health Hazards: The most obvious issue with contaminated water entering clean water is the health hazard. It can make you incredibly sick. In some cases, it could lead to death. Consuming contaminated water can lead to long-term health issues.
– Property Damage: Another issue that comes from backflow is property damage. It can damage parts of your plumbing, the fixtures in your home, and even compromise the structural integrity of your house. Contaminates are often incredibly corrosive.
– Legal Issues: It is common for local and state governments to mandate backflow prevention to ensure water contamination doesn’t happen. There are fines and legal consequences for those that don’t adhere to these mandates.
Common Backflow Prevention Devices
Backflow prevention is an important part of any plumbing system. Here are some ways that it can be done:
– Air Gap: There can be physical gaps between the water outlet and flood level that makes it impossible for contaminated water to enter clean water. This is a simple, yet effective solution to this problem.
– Check Valves: When there are check valves in place, it makes it, so water is only allowed to flow one way so that it doesn’t reverse and go the other way toward clean water. These are often found in irrigation systems and occasionally in residential plumbing systems.
– Reduced Pressure Zone Devices: If you live in a high-risk area, RPZ devices are going to be the way to go. They are more advanced technologically and have multiple valves that maintain water pressure, so backflow isn’t an issue.
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At Damorie Construction, we know how important it is to have backflow prevention in your plumbing system. That is why we offer backflow prevention installation for our valued customers. Not only do they need to be installed, but you have to maintain them as well to ensure they’re working well. You can rely on us for all of your backflow prevention needs. Call us today!
