Backflow testing in Haymarket.

Most of Haymarket mail is new. Across 20169 close to eight owner homes in ten went up in 2000 or later, the median one in 2006, in subdivisions like Dominion Valley and Piedmont. Neighborhoods from those years often got lawn sprinklers from the builder, with a device by the foundation, so that’s where the yearly Prince William Water letter lands most. The oldest of those systems are now around twenty, which is about when worn rubber starts failing a test that passed every year before.

Inside the town limits the houses are a little older, mostly 1980s and 90s, and about one in three is a townhouse. A row of townhouses seldom has its own irrigation, so in town the letter usually goes to the single-family lots off Washington Street and the streets around it. If you’re adding a device there, start at the Town office: the whole town is a historic district, its design guidelines want outdoor meters and equipment screened from the street, and the Town’s zoning approval comes before the County plumbing permit.

Bull Run Mountain is its own story. Prince William Water serves the mountain and Evergreen from wells, on a system that never ties into the surface water feeding the Town and Dominion Valley, and plenty of houses up there run on private wells instead. The homes are older, median 1978, and sprinklers are less common. A notice only follows a device connected to the utility’s system, so a house on its own well usually never sees one.

Since the report is your responsibility in Prince William, the last step is yours too: once the tester sends it, keep the approved copy where you’ll find it next year. And look at the device before your irrigation company winterizes. A PVB, the brass one on two pipes standing up out of the mulch, means air, never antifreeze. The sprinkler winterizing guide shows how to drain it.