Air Gap Needed for Garden Hose Water Feed? Just got inspected for it!

Matthew Norman

Moderator
My technician was just wrapping up all the hoses getting ready to leave when the city of englewood stops and gets out of his vehicle. He begins to question my employee on what he is spraying? My guy was sort of confused and told him he just got done washing a house.

The guy starts yelling outside my customers house at my employee telling him he needs to have an air gap on our garden hose water feed line and that we are the reason people are getting sick and that he has three fines that he is going to write us up for. Our technician just appologized to him and was very respectful and he finally ends up leaving without giving any tickets. We also have a 3" fire hydrant air gape on the trailer which is very noticable and has passed inspection. This is the first time I've ever heard of having an air gap for your water feed hose. This is getting crazy...
 
Our water feed hose is set-up with a hudson float valve. Wouldn't that be considered a back flow prevention device? Isn't it usually either a backflow prevention or air gap anyways? This is real suspcious to me since we just redesigned our website and I keep seeing the same competitor re-visiting around the same time for the past week and on the front of their site he has his arm wrapped around the govenor of Colorado and ALSO resides in the same city we just got harrassed in?
 
I think your suspicions are correct.

There are some competitors that just cannot handle it when others out there are doing better, getting bigger or better jobs, cannot handle competition, etc.....

Sounds like a wuss competitor called them on you just to harass you, maybe one of those wow wusses.
 
If you wanted to add the garden hose air gap, you can just tie it into the existing air gap you have for the hydrant connection but you would have to block the bottom where the fire hydrant hose connects or the garden hose water will empty there.

Another idea is to put a block valve near the top before the hydrant air gap drops and install the garden hose fitting there so all you have to do is block that hydrant valve so the whole tube does not fill with water (you don't want to get soaked when taking the cap off the hydrant air gap plumbing when going to use it and it is full of water from using the garden hose air gap).

Or, you can just use zip ties and use a length of garden hose to attach to the air gap pipes and run it the same way so it drops into the tank but you will not be able to use the float valve anymore either way.

I have thought about this idea for a while now since I use the hudson float valves so the tank does not over fill when you are not there watching it but there is another type of float valve, just like the kind that are in toilets but I am not sure of how many gpm's they are rated for. If you could mount one of these in the tank but have the outlet coming up and tying up onto the air gap of the existing plumbing or make a new air gap then it all would work ok but I have not used one of those types of float valves and not sure if the water comes out of a threaded fitting (if the outlet is threaded then this idea can work) or if it comes out of another place.

It would be nice if someone out there came up with a float valve to use with tanks that have air gaps but I am thinking that there has not been enough of a demand yet or nobody has talked to anyone about this.

Usually on the large water trucks they fill up until the water is overflowing but in our business, we don't want the water to over flow, just keep a level in the tank so we don't run out of water while working.
 
I would think that most of the hose bibs have air gaps built into them. At least the ones that I have used do. Maybe on older homes they are not there yet. You could just plumb one of those faucets between the hose reel and the tank.

People are not getting sick because of pressure washers, they are getting sick because of gov't regulations. Oh and all the crap that they put in our food these days.
 
Some cities require an air gap for a fill. It is a gap between the outlet of your fill line, and the inlet of the container the water is going into. I never understood the purpose of the air gap, but have them on my trucks. I figure if a critter can swim upstream of water in a pipe, it could swim up stream in water not in a pipe.
 
Is this what you need to have between the faucet and inlet hose to your tank to be air gap compliant?

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...gId=-1&keyword=hose+attachments&storeId=10051

That is a vacuum breaker, not the air gap that the cities, municipalities and other gov't. bodies want used when filling from municipal water supplies.

The air gap is just a pipe that is above the tank so that is there was a vacuum on the pipe, the water could not go back into the pipe and contaminate the city water supply, usually 2" to 6" gap between the pipe and the tank opening.

I will look to see if I can find a picture showing an air gap on a water truck or tank and post it here.
 
That is a vacuum breaker, not the air gap that the cities, municipalities and other gov't. bodies want used when filling from municipal water supplies.

Dang Chris you beat me to it!

There are several different kinds of backflow devices...Vacuum Breaker, Check, Double Check, and RPZ's (Reduced Pressure Zone) all of these mechanical backflow devices can and will fail....There is only one true backflow device that will NEVER Fail........Air Gap.

Gap distance must be 2X the diameter of the fill hose....... 2" fill hose, 4" gap between inlet water drop and top of tank.


748.jpg
 
Our water feed hose is set-up with a hudson float valve. Wouldn't that be considered a back flow prevention device? Isn't it usually either a backflow prevention or air gap anyways?

No.......Yes......

A float valve has nothing to do with backflow and everything to do with not over filling your tank.
 
Is this what you need to have between the faucet and inlet hose to your tank to be air gap compliant?

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...gId=-1&keyword=hose+attachments&storeId=10051

Exactly all you need is a backflow preventor when using the garden hose for a fire hose you can use the backflo preventor like a meter or an air gap is also allowed I think it is a 6" min gap for compliance but check with your local water authority to be certian. If the homeowners house had a backflow preventor on it (which it should to be compliant) you would have no worries unless you removed it.
 
I have had to remove several of the homeowner's backflow preventors in order to get more flow from their faucets. Apparently, they get clogged up after years of use and reduce flow.
 
How do you remove them David??

If the attachment screw is still attached, it can be loosened to remove easily. Some won't come off and others have to be muscled off with a wrench. Fortunately, there haven't been that many clogged ones in the past 4 years that won't provide a flow of at least 4-5 gpm.
 
My technician was just wrapping up all the hoses getting ready to leave when the city of englewood stops and gets out of his vehicle. He begins to question my employee on what he is spraying? My guy was sort of confused and told him he just got done washing a house.

The guy starts yelling outside my customers house at my employee telling him he needs to have an air gap on our garden hose water feed line and that we are the reason people are getting sick and that he has three fines that he is going to write us up for. Our technician just appologized to him and was very respectful and he finally ends up leaving without giving any tickets. We also have a 3" fire hydrant air gape on the trailer which is very noticable and has passed inspection. This is the first time I've ever heard of having an air gap for your water feed hose. This is getting crazy...

County inspector (Waste Water) rolled up on me today at a commercial gig. Wanted to see my reclaim and also how I placed my sand booms, filter socks and etc to prevent water from going into the storm drain. He was cool and didn't take too much of my time from washing after I showed him what I had and took him over to the storm drain to show him how I positioned everything. They didn't inspect my feed line to the tank though...
 

Attachments

  • County Inspection.jpg
    County Inspection.jpg
    71.5 KB · Views: 56
Most of the time those vacuum breakers are not working correctly, sometimes they are clogged up, sometimes they are leaking a lot when the water flow is on, sometimes there is no flow at all, I hate those things.

There is a screw on it that tightens into the threads on the water faucet so that it will not come off.

If the screw is broken off, you can drill it out to remove the vacuum breaker to install a new one or leave it off if the customer is ok with that.
 
Back
Top