Fairfax Station is almost all single family homes, about 98% detached and most with four bedrooms or more, and roughly 1,700 parcels in 22039 have an active well. Nearly all of them sit west of Ox Road, along Hampton, Fairfax Station, Henderson, Wolf Run Shoals and Yates Ford Roads. On those lots the backflow rule that matters most isn’t the sprinkler test. It’s that a private well and Fairfax Water’s line can never be connected, not even through a valve.
When a well house switches to public water, Fairfax Water gives two routes. One is abandoning the well, with a Health Department review. The other is its Lawn Irrigation Well Procedure: the well stays, but only for the sprinklers, capped off from the house, with photos of the capped piping and the new water connection sent in and a final plumbing inspection before the meter goes on. If your sprinklers still run off the old well, find out which route the house took.
Big lots also mean a frost-proof yard hydrant out by the barn, the garden or the paddock. Fairfax Water treats those as a backflow risk because of the drain hole at the bottom. On public water, a yard hydrant needs a backflow assembly ahead of it, an RPZ in Fairfax Water’s guidance, plus a permit, an inspection and a test report before it’s used, then a yearly test like any other device.
Crosspointe and South Run are the other half of Fairfax Station: public water and sewer, most homes built between 1980 and 1999, and plenty of sprinklers and pools. Around Crosspointe Drive the County’s tax map grid puts the test in April, right as sprinklers come back on, so one visit can cover both. Our Fairfax County backflow testing page has the countywide side.