Lead testing before you buy and after you renovate

Lead reaches drinking water through contact with plumbing components that contain it. That contact is not confined to older properties. The lead free standard permits a weighted average of 0.25 percent lead across the wetted surfaces of pipes, fittings and fixtures, and several categories of component sit outside that rule entirely.

Olympian Water Testing provides professional lead in water testing for homeowners, property buyers, renters, landlords and families throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Components in routine use today that can carry lead include faucet bodies in kitchens and bathrooms, angle stops and shutoff valves beneath sinks and behind appliances, tub and shower mixing valves, hose bibbs and exterior spigots, brass pipe fittings such as tees, elbows, couplings, unions and adapters, ball and gate valves, backflow preventers and pressure reducing valves, water heater nipples and relief valves, faucet cartridge housings and stems, and pump wetted components where a well or booster pump is present.

Fixtures manufactured to the lead free standard return measurable lead in drinking water testing with regularity, which is why the standard is a permitted content rather than a guarantee of absence.

Build date is therefore an unreliable indicator. A recently constructed home and a century old brownstone both warrant assessment, and only measurement at the tap establishes the position for either.

Work on a supply system disturbs mineral scale that has been stable for years, and where new material meets older material at a junction the behavior of that junction can influence release.

For that reason testing before and after plumbing work is frequently more informative than either assessment alone, since the first establishes the starting position and the second indicates the outcome.

Olympian Water Testing requests a specified stagnation period from the client, documents the elapsed time at the sampling event, and leaves outlet screens undisturbed so particulate lead accumulating there is captured in the sample.

Lead is collected as an ordered sequence of draws along the supply path, and the pattern across that series indicates whether a fixture, a branch line, a riser or the water service line is contributing.

Our reporting states each sampling point, the recorded conditions, the analytical method, the reporting limit and the measured concentration, with the applicable reference framework identified.

That distinction carries direct financial consequence, since replacing a fixture, replacing a branch line or riser, and replacing the water service line are three entirely different undertakings.

Buyers frequently commission testing during a contract period, when a vacant property provides an extended stagnation period naturally and when the information remains actionable.

Tenants can generally arrange sampling at the taps inside a unit with the client’s cooperation, and reports are prepared so results can be shared with a landlord or managing agent.

Olympian Water Testing has operated across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut since 1991 with NELAP accredited laboratory analysis, and water-testing support is available 24/7.