Compliance Self-Check | Hammerhead Flow Co.

What this is, and what it is not

This is a self-check to help you see where your own records are thin. It does not determine whether any property is in compliance, and a full set of ticks is not a clean bill of health — only your water provider can tell you what they have on file. Tick what you can genuinely answer today, not what you could find out eventually.

Nothing here is sent anywhere, stored, or recorded. Your answers stay in the page and disappear when you close it. Print a blank copy if you would rather walk the property with it on paper.

How many testable assemblies are on the property?

Not how many you think, and not how many were there when the property was built. A count you could stand behind if a water provider asked. Assemblies get added during renovations, irrigation expansions and equipment swaps, and they rarely get added to anyone's list.

If you cannot answer itStart with a walk. The identification guide on this site covers what counts as testable and what does not — a hose-bibb breaker is not an assembly you file a report on, and a pressure reducing valve is not a backflow device at all.

Do you know which water provider serves each property?

The rules come from the water system, not the town on the mailing address. On the northern Outer Banks those are frequently different — four separate systems operate between Kitty Hawk and Oregon Inlet, and several towns run their own while buying water wholesale from Dare County.

If you cannot answer itThe water provider page on this site maps town to provider, verified against each town's own published material.

Can you put your hands on last year's test report for each one?

Not the invoice — the report. The invoice proves you paid someone. The report is the document that says the assembly passed, and it is what a provider, a buyer's inspector or an insurer will ask to see.

If you cannot answer itIf the reports live with a former vendor or a previous manager, that is worth resolving now rather than during a transaction.

Do you know the due date for each assembly?

Due dates are set by each water provider, and additional tests can be required after an installation or repair, so they rarely line up with the calendar year. A portfolio assembled over several years can have due dates scattered across the calendar, which is how one assembly quietly goes two years without a test while everything else looks current.

If you cannot answer itA provider that mails a reminder will mail it to the account holder on file — which may not be you, and may be an address nobody checks.

Do you know the report was actually received and matched?

Providers track assemblies by serial number, not by address. A report filed against the wrong serial, or filed to the wrong department, can sit unmatched in a system while the property owner believes the matter is closed.

If you cannot answer itConfirming receipt is a separate step from having the test done. It is worth asking whoever tested last whether they confirmed, or only submitted.

If the property changed hands or managers, did the records come with it?

Compliance history does not transfer itself. Assemblies, serial numbers, due dates and past reports routinely stay with the outgoing vendor or manager, and the new one starts from nothing without knowing it.

If you cannot answer itA handover with no backflow records is common and fixable, but only if someone notices before a notice arrives.

0 of 6 answered confidently Tick the ones you could answer right now.

If several were blank

That is the normal starting point

Almost every portfolio we look at begins here. Backflow compliance is administrative work that sits between a plumber, a landscaper, a water utility and whoever happens to be managing the property this year, and it falls through the gap between all four. The assemblies get tested when someone remembers, and the paperwork goes wherever the tester decided to put it.

None of that is a crisis on its own. It becomes one at predictable moments: a provider notice, a property sale, an insurance review, or a failed assembly that turns out to have been failing for two years. Each of those is easier to handle with a list than without one.

The work of fixing it is not complicated, it is just nobody's job. Building the inventory, confirming which provider governs each address, recovering what reports exist, and putting every assembly on one calendar — that is a few days of administration once, and then it maintains itself.

Do you know where
your compliance stands?

What this is, and what it is not

That is the normal starting point

Want a hand building the list?