What is Backflow and How Do Communities Mitigate the Public Health Risk?

Christoph Lohr: And welcome back to The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical. I’m your host, Christoph Lohr. In today’s episode, we’re going to cover what communities need to know about backflow prevention and water quality. In this episode, we delve deep into the critical issues of backflow prevention, exploring the latest technologies and methodologies that are transforming the field. Join master plumber and FASSE member Sean Cleary, vice president of Industry Programs and Backfill Prevention Institute Operations, as we discuss the cause of backflow, the risks to water systems, regulatory compliance requirements, and even some real-world case studies. Sean, welcome to The Authority Podcast.

Sean Cleary: Thank you for having me.

Christoph Lohr: Well, let’s dive right in. Can you explain what backflow is and why it is significant issues in water systems?

Sean Cleary: Yes. Well, a textbook definition is, it’s simply the reversal of flow from that which is normally intended. But it is a little bit more than that. As our systems become more and more complicated this becomes a bigger, bigger issue. We do so many different things with water, we use it in so many different ways, and backflow occurs when we either lose pressure or we have large pressure fluctuations and the water is allowed to travel in the opposite direction. Simply put, the way everything in a plumbing mechanical system works is that high pressure goes to low pressure. That’s how things work. So when I open a faucet, the water moves in that direction. How long have we been having backflow incidents? Probably dating back to the Roman aqueducts. But in a lot of cases, I don’t think we realized the problems that we were having. And again, as things get more sophisticated, things get a little more difficult.

So in the backflow industry, what we try to be is like the police officers controlling traffic. Making sure water only flows in the proper direction to make sure there’s no contamination or pollution to the systems, whether it’s a small system, residentially, whether it’s a large commercial system, this is a factor that really, really has to be taken into place because it’s simply based on the laws of physics.

The laws of physics aren’t going to change, so we have to ensure that when we build systems, we build them correctly to make sure that we don’t have problems in the future.

Christoph Lohr: What are some of the most common causes of backflow and how can they be prevented?

Sean Cleary: That’s another great question.

What causes backflow is our pressure fluctuations, things like water main breaks, a lot of things that are unforeseen. When we look at things in the backflow world, we can do the wrong thing over and over again and not have a backflow issue or a backflow incident because we maintain solid supply pressure in facilities, but the fighting of a fire hydrant flushing, the simple act of draining a large building to make repairs, all of these can cause a backflow incident to happen.

What it is, is you need two things to have a backflow problem. You need a cross connection, which is a connection between what is good and bad water, and you need the difference in pressure. In a lot of cases, we will have one or the other, but we don’t have both. So doing the wrong thing, like throwing a hose in your swimming pool and putting water in it, 90 percent of the time it’s not a problem, but when there’s a fire two blocks from your house and the pressure in the main is greatly reduced, you’ll end up pulling water from the pool into the hose into your home and possibly all the way through your home and out into the street. So abnormal conditions cause these things to happen and we create problems each and every day that we do have to address.
Christoph Lohr: What are some of the key regulatory requirements for backflow prevention in different regions?

Sean Cleary: It varies from state to state.

It varies from borough to borough, county to county. Everything starts at the federal level, obviously, and works its way down. The Safe Drinking Water Act, which was passed in 1974, sort of kicked this all off with backflow prevention programs. Again, like I said, it’s a phenomenon that’s happened since the beginning of time, but we really started to realize the danger in it in the late ’60s, early ’70s and ’80s and ’90s.

So since then, almost every state in the country has passed their own Safe Drinking Water Act, which transfers the responsibility for water safety down to a state level. And then it goes down farther than that. And it is important to realize that there is no one code for the country. To be honest, I guess that’s the best way to put it.
Everybody has different regulations. I live in Scranton; Philadelphia is different than Scranton; New York state is different than California. So if you are working in the industry, it’s incredibly important that you know the rules and regulations in your own jurisdictions. There are some commonality across all of them, but there are particularly different things, even with the frequency of testing, in different jurisdictions.

Christoph Lohr: Can you discuss any recent incidents or case studies where backflow prevention played a critical role?

Sean Cleary: Yes, we, we continue to have issues. Now, one thing I will say is we have less issues than we had in the past. And that is because cross-connection-control programs are in place in most areas of the country.
While we have smaller incidents than have occurred going back to the ’80s and ’90s, since a garden hose is all we need to have an incident, we see them all the time. There was recently an incident in May in the state of Maine where a fire company came and pushed foam into a fire department connection on a building and pushed the foam back into the system because the backflow prevention that had been installed on the fire system was incorrect.

The last big incident that occurred — and this is good to say the last extremely large incident that happened — was all the way back in December of 2016 and that was in Corpus Christi, Texas. And as a result of the incident that occurred there, what happened is 550,000 people — every resident of the city of Corpus Christi, Texas — couldn’t use their water for a four-day period because of a cross connection at an asphalt plant, and then the fact that the city was not enforcing the regulations for testing of containment valves. The material was allowed to get back into the city water supply, which created a citywide problem. So while these things are rarer than they used to be, they still happen.

We had a case in Colorado last year at a middle school where antifreeze got into the middle school drinking water system from the building’s heating system. A contractor working on the system had left open an unprotected bypass and when he was done with the system, he managed to forget to close the bypass and there was no protection on it because it was a bad installation.

The antifreeze ended up back into the school water. Now, thankfully, one of the teachers noticed that the water coming out of the drinking fountains was oddly colored and they stopped allowing children to drink from the water. They tested it, they flushed the systems and everything else and brought it back on hand.
But every day we create millions of cross connections in the United States, some protected, some not. These things are not going away, although they have become rarer, which is giving us some issues because now people think if there isn’t a large problem every several months or every several years that we really don't need backflow prevention, we really don’t need to test it, and nothing could be further from the truth. The reason we don’t have the problems we used to is because of the cross-connection programs we have in place.

Christoph Lohr: Gotcha. What are the maintenance and inspection requirements for backflow prevention systems?

Sean Cleary: Well, depending on the type of valve that is installed, we normally look for annual testing of backflow prevention assemblies.

We test annually, we test when they’re installed, we test when they’re repaired, we test when they’re relocated. And that’s an important critical thing that we do to ensure that they’ll have continued reliance. So that is more of a national regulation that you see in place. Although other areas, the state of New Jersey as an example, for things that they consider to be ultra-high hazards, they test those valves quarterly. In Massachusetts they have some valves that they test twice a year. So it all depends on your jurisdiction, but I would say normally an annual test, and that annual test is critical because what we have is mechanical devices, and they’re very prone to dirt and debris and problems, but they all have built-in redundancies. The secret is if we’re testing, we’re catching any problems with one part of the valve before we have a catastrophic failure of the entire valve. We can’t overstate how important that annual testing is.

Christoph Lohr: How do you address the challenges of retrofitting existing systems with backflow prevention devices?

Sean Cleary: That can be problematic at times, especially when we go back to, um, the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, when we were trying to retrofit mechanical rooms with valves that are larger than they are now and valves that really required horizontal installation. When you get into a mechanical room in a facility, usually they don’t make it any bigger than it has to be because it’s unrentable space and unusable space, so they keep it as small as they can, and trying to find 7 or 8 feet of uninterrupted straight pipe to put a backflow preventer in was a bit of a challenge. The newer valves are smaller, lighter. We have a lot of different options with orientations, we have E-pattern valves, N-pattern valves. There are a lot of valves we can install horizontally, vertically, vertical upflow, vertical downflow. So that does give us a lot of options with that. In the fire protection systems and things like that, there are still a lot of systems out there with single-check valves as opposed to testable backflow assemblies.

When we change a valve like that, you’re really changing the entire system. The backflow preventer is one part of a larger system, so to make sure that we have the volume and the pressure we need, it is difficult. And if I’m retrofitting either a domestic system or a fire protection system, every type of backflow preventer we install steals pressure from the system.

So it’s really up to the installing contractor, the designer, and everything else to really look at that. If I’m going to put a backflow preventer on a fire system where none existed before, I’m going to have to do a hydraulic calculation of the entire system to make sure it’s going to function. If I have buildings with marginal pressure before I install a backflow preventer, the pressure loss has to be taken into consideration.
Depending on the type of backflow preventer we use, it could steal anywhere from 14 to 26 pounds from a system when you’re talking about reduced pressure principal assemblies. And if we’re installing air gaps, it takes all the pressure. We need the pressure to make our modern systems work. So retrofitting is a specialty, but like I said, the industry has come a long way.

The valves are smaller, they’re lighter, they’re easier to install, they’re easier to repair. We have been doing a fairly good job with it, but there are still literally millions of connections, and millions of water services across the United States that have no backflow protection and need that retrofitting to be done.

Christoph Lohr: Well, and that kind of leads to the next question, which is, obviously there’s the devices themselves, but then there’s the professionals to implement it. What role do professionals, like engineers and inspectors, play in ensuring effective backflow prevention?

Sean Cleary: To have a working program, it is incredibly important that everything from the engineer to the designer to the plan review understands the systems themselves. We have gotten a little better. In the past when we were putting a plan together, I think they just drew the backflow preventer on the plan without realizing they drew it 40 feet in the air. It’s a valve that needs constant testing and maintenance.

Engineers have come a long way in the last 10, 12 years recognizing that a little bit better, but we still have issues where we don’t have adequate clearances and things like that for the systems. And then things do on occasion trickle through plan review because it’s not the most important thing people are looking at.
And then what happens is it gets onto the job site and if the plumbers and the pipe fitters and sprinkler fitters that are installing them don’t really understand backflow prevention, it’s a problem because they’re going to go off a plan that’s incorrect and install a valve that’s incorrect.

And then when our inspectors come out to do their inspections and do our occupancies and everything else, when something falls through the cracks and ends up being installed incorrectly, it takes a lot to get people to make a change after a building’s already been built.

Contractor’s gone, the building’s been inspected, but we see problems all the time. But I will say this, ASPE, ASSE, ABPA, IAPMO, we’re doing our best to put education seminars together, to put things like this out so that people realize that — realize the importance of it and realize that it is a different part of the puzzle.

Plus when I install a backflow preventer, I change the hydraulics of the system. As we’re designing new buildings or retrofitting old ones, we need to take that into consideration. Thermal expansion issues, loss of pressure, all of that is important. And again, I would have to say, people are getting better with it.

They’ve seen it. It’s definitely a much more common piece of the plumbing or mechanical system than it used to be. They are thinking about discharge from large relief valves on large reduced-pressure principle assemblies. People are catching things that they didn’t catch before.

We’d install a valve that could dump 3,000 gallons a minute and put a 4-inch floor drain in the room and hope for the best. We’ve flooded enough buildings now that we understand the issues, and the whole industry has been getting better with that.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Just a second ago, you mentioned a number of organizations and BPI, or the Backflow Prevention Institute, was one of them.

What is the Backflow Prevention Institute, and what does it do?

Sean Cleary: The Backflow Prevention Institute’s been around since the mid-’80s, and we currently are ASSE’s largest and most wide-ranging backflow training school. We do what I think is world-class training. We do it in many, many different locations.

We do backflow tester training, repair. We do surveyor and specialist training. We also create educational material for this. We train everybody from plumbers and pipe fitters, sprinkler fitters to waste and water people to mechanical maintenance people in larger facilities to inspectors and to designers to engineers.

We try to get all the knowledge out we can; that is why the Backflow Prevention Institute exists, is to raise the level of the importance of backflow prevention to more and more people. We like to start at the consumer level and work our way up from the end user to the designer to make sure that these things are installed correctly and people understand the importance of them.

We are having some issues in the country now where people are trying to move our testing requirements from annually to every three years and things like that. We really need to educate people about the importance of installing, testing, maintaining backflow prevention assemblies and surveying buildings to make sure that that protection is in place.

That’s something else that BPI recently got into is the surveying service where BPI will actually come out to your facility, to your base, to your town, and actually go through it and give you a plan of action to correct whatever deficiencies exist.

Christoph Lohr: Wow. I mean, obviously, honestly, it sounds like you’re doing quite a lot, Sean, and I think you’re going to see a lot in all those experiences, especially on the teaching side. You mentioned the word knowledge, and honestly there’s past knowledge, there’s current knowledge, and then there’s the future knowledge. I would imagine in your travels and in your experience, you are seeing some trends, what the potential of the future of backflow prevention is. Can you tell our audience what advancements or trends you see in the future of backflow prevention?

Sean Cleary: Yes, I can. The industry is changing because the plumbing industry is changing. The mechanical industry is changing. To be honest, the only constant we have in our entire industry is change. Things always, the materials we use, the joining methods, the systems we install, everything continues to change and the backflow prevention industry is no exception.

We’re moving to more stainless steel and plastic valves. We’re moving away from some of the other larger, bulkier epoxy-coated valves that existed for the longest time. Plus we’ve had our own issues with lead-free brass and all those kind of things. So the valves are getting smaller, they’re getting lighter, they’re getting easier to install, they’re getting easier to repair.

I will say this for every backflow prevention manufacturer that’s out there. They’re constantly looking to build a better mousetrap and they build whatever we need for whatever situation it is, whether it’s post-carbonated beverage dispensers, whether it’s hospitals, whether it’s antifreeze loops, they provide us with the valves that we need to do that.

They’re also simplifying things a little bit better. They’re stabilizing the size of valves. A lot of the manufacturers now, if you buy a 2 ½-, a 3- or a 4-inch valve, the center of the valve is 4-inch. So if you’re stocking parts, you’re stocking the same parts for three different size valves.

So we’re seeing more and more of that, even on our testing equipment that we’re using now. Electronic test kits, while they were around the fringe for years and years and years, have come down in price and are more reasonable to purchase and use these days. So we’re seeing a lot of electronic equipment being used to do that.
We’re seeing a lot of electronic equipment being installed on the valves themselves to sense water leaks or to sense relief valve discharge, send signals out, close valves to make sure that we’re not flooding systems and everything else. When AI comes into it, I’m not sure what’s going to happen there.

In an own selfish way, I’m hoping they don't invent backflow preventers that test themselves because that’s sort of my wheelhouse. But I will say this —the industry has come a long way and they make some very, very good products. And I do think AI and I think valve monitoring — not so much valve testing — but I think valve monitoring is really going to come to be a much stronger part of what we do in the very, very near future.
I look forward to it. I look forward to change. Again, I got into this in the early ’90s, so the changes I’ve seen since then are amazing and changes nowadays seem to come faster and faster. That is another thing about the industry; you’ve got to keep up.

That’s why we do recertification classes and things like that. The change keeps coming and we’ve got to keep everybody in the field ready for it because in truth a cross-connection-control-program is only as good as the skill of the testers and the quality of the equipment we install.

This stuff is really, really important and I do think we need to know that. We’re getting more and more people in the world; there is no doubt about that. By 2050, we’ll have 10 billion people on this earth. We all need water; there’s only so much of it. It's really important that we take good care of the water that we do have.

Christoph Lohr: You covered a lot of ground in our conversation here. As we wrap things up, if you were going to summarize everything you spoke about, about backflow prevention with us today in one word, what would that one word be?

Sean Cleary: I would have to go with change because like I said, that is the only constant in our industry and everybody who does this work really, really, really has to keep up to date on what is going on. We can’t be asleep at the wheel with what we’re doing here. It’s way too important, not just to the public health, but to the entire world.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Sean, if our listeners want to get in touch with you or with the Backflow Prevention Institute, what’s the best way for them to do so?

Sean Cleary: Well, they can contact us on our website, or if they just want to do research on us, I’m very, very open. Email phone, whatever they have to do. Our website is www.iapmobpi.org. And that will give you any information you need to contact us with every different way that there is to contact us.

And again, whether you’re looking for training or whether you’re just looking for advice or have questions, we welcome that.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical, I want to say thank you, Sean, for joining us as a guest and taking time out of your schedule and sharing your knowledge and expertise and insights with us and our listeners.

Sean Cleary: Well, thank you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.