Contents Back of the manual
About this manual
This site is a publication, a handbook for people who own or look after houses on Colorado's Western Slope, and it isn't a plumbing or heating contractor.
A.1 What it isn't
It takes no calls, books no work, sends nobody out and does no installs or repairs. It has no office, phone line or service area. If you were looking for a plumbing or heating company, this isn't one, and it has no connection to any company in the region with a similar name. For local work, use the state and county checks in §10-2.
A.2 What it is
It's one manual in numbered sections, covering wells, cisterns, hauled water, ditch water, swelling ground, freezes, propane, wood heat, furnaces, heat pumps and swamp coolers. The emergency drills come first because that's when people need them.
Facts come from public sources: state statutes, federal agencies, university extension services, water providers, and makers' manuals for their own equipment. Each section lists its sources at the foot, with the date they were last checked. Some advice is plain practical sense with no source behind it, and the sections try to write that as advice and not as a rule.
A.3 What it couldn't check
Several Colorado government sites couldn't be opened when this manual was last checked, including state water, public health and licensing pages and some county and town offices. Where that matters the section says so, and tells you which office to ask. Statutes were read on published copies, not the state's own site. Rules change, so treat a dated line as dated.
Nothing here replaces your own well permit, your stove or furnace manual, a building official or a licensed tradesperson on site. If a section and one of those disagree, go with the one that can see your house.
A.4 Who runs it
The site is run by a team connected with four plumbing, heating and water businesses: PlumbingSupplyAndMore, SoftPro Water Systems, Quality Water Treatment and Central Plumbing & HVAC. Some sections link to them, always with a line beside the link saying so. Those links help the businesses, so weigh them with that in mind. No section's advice requires buying from them.
There are no named authors, because no one person's credentials stand behind the whole manual. Sections are credited to the manual and carry their sources.