Inside the town limits, the Town sends you to Prince William Water for both water and sewer, so the utility’s rules on this page hold there just as they do in the county. Prince William Water counts Dominion Valley in the same Haymarket system, fed from surface water: Potomac River water that Fairfax Water treats at Corbalis, mixed with what the City of Manassas draws and treats from Lake Manassas. The pressure reducing valve on your incoming line is yours to keep up, and so is the pipe on your side of the property. Heavy rain tests that sewer. Prince William Water lists storm water and groundwater seeping into sewer pipes through cracks among the causes of overflows, and the Town’s hazard plan ranks flash flooding a high risk. A lowest drain that gurgles in a downpour deserves a camera look before it backs up.
Bull Run Mountain Estates and Evergreen run on something else. Prince William Water serves a small cluster of homes there from six wells, a separately permitted system that by its permit can’t tie into the Haymarket one, and it treats that water with sodium hydroxide to keep it from eating at household plumbing. Neighbors who aren’t on it pump from private wells, where any treatment is the owner’s call. Copper is where untreated, aggressive well water shows itself, as pinhole leaks years before the pipe looks old.
Off public sewer, waste goes to a septic tank, and Prince William County Code 23-48 wants a pump-out at least once every five years; the Virginia Department of Health’s Prince William Health District oversees septic systems and wells in the county. When drains slow down in a house on septic there are two suspects, the pipe out to the tank and the tank itself, and a camera run through the cleanout tells them apart before anyone backs up a pump truck.
The pipe in the walls follows the age of the house. In the Town the median owner home is from 1995, and about six in ten homes went up in the 1980s and 90s, the same stretch when builders were still running polybutylene for water lines; grey plastic stamped PB near the water heater is worth a look. The 2000s houses that make up most of 20169 usually carry PEX or copper water lines and plastic drain pipe, and their original pressure reducing valves are old enough now to start letting the pressure creep up.