BackflowFiled

Filing a backflow test report in Washington State

Every report goes to two places: the owner of the backflow preventer and the purveyor. That is statewide, it is WAC 246-292-034(4), and it accepts “an original, copy, facsimile, or electronic format”. What the state does not set is a deadline — that belongs to your purveyor. Read against the Washington Administrative Code and each purveyor's own current document on 21-Sep-2026.

Both recipients, from one test

WAC 246-292-034(4): “A BAT shall submit a completed backflow preventer inspection and field test report in an original, copy, facsimile, or electronic format to the owner of the backflow preventer and to the purveyor.”

Two destinations, one completion, and no discretion about either. The commonest way a Washington report goes wrong is not the testing — it is a report that reached the purveyor and never reached the owner, or reached the owner and sat in a truck. Electronic delivery is accepted in terms, so there is no reason for the second copy to be the one that does not happen.

What the report must contain — all thirteen

WAC 246-292-036 enumerates the content and prescribes no artwork. There is no official Washington form to trace, which means the only way to know a report is complete is to go subsection by subsection:

A purveyor may hand you its own form — Tacoma, Bellevue and Everett all do — but the form is a container for this list, not a substitute for it. If a form omits something in these thirteen, the rule still wants it.

There is no statewide deadline, and that is not an oversight

WAC 246-290-490(3)(g) puts it in the purveyor's hands: “Element 6: The purveyor shall develop and implement a backflow prevention assembly testing quality control assurance program including, but not limited to, documentation of BAT certification and test kit calibration, test report contents, and time frames for submitting completed test reports.”

So a Washington deadline is a local fact, and it is local per water system rather than per city. Not one of the five purveyors below publishes a figure. Spokane's programme is explicit that the date is printed on the notice sent to your customer; Bellevue's asks only for “a timely manner”. We will not print a number we have not read, because an invented deadline is wrong in both directions — it tells you that you are late when you are not, or fine when you are not.

A lapsed test kit is a rule violation, statewide

WAC 246-292-034(6): a BAT shall have the field test kit and components “(a) Evaluated for performance, pressure-tested, and checked for accuracy: (i) At least once within the twelve month period before the inspection and field test date; and (ii) By an independent laboratory” meeting Appendix A, Section A.7 of the USC Manual.

Twelve months, an independent laboratory, and measured back from the test date rather than from the date you file. Subsection (7) of 246-292-036 then puts the kit's details on the face of every report, so a lapse is visible to the purveyor on the document itself. Seattle goes further and will not let you submit at all until your calibration certificate is on its system. We will email you before yours lapses, free — no account, and it is useful to a tester who never becomes a customer.

The purveyors we have read — 5

Only purveyors whose own current document we have read are listed. Washington has hundreds of water systems and a directory is worth exactly what its worst row is worth, so a purveyor we could not verify is absent rather than guessed at. If yours is missing, tell us which one — that is genuinely how the order gets decided.

When we checked

Checked 21-Sep-2026, against the Washington Administrative Code at app.leg.wa.gov and against each purveyor's own form, programme document or tester page. These change, and a stale answer about a legal duty is worse than no answer. Tell us if this is wrong and we will fix it the same day.

We make software that fills in the purveyor's own form, sends both required copies and keeps the record — what that looks like. This page is here whether or not that is of any use to you. All 46 British Columbia authorities →