Nationwide, landscape irrigation is estimated to account for roughly one-third of all residential water use, totaling more than 9 billion gallons per day—a figure that can climb much higher as homeowners maintain lawns during the hot summer months. As part of Smart Irrigation Month, WaterSense and the Irrigation Association are offering these five tips to help homeowners improve outdoor irrigation efficiency:
1. Water smarter, not harder
EPA estimates that more than 50 percent of landscape water is lost due to evaporation, wind, or overwatering. If you water during the heat of the day, for instance, as much as 30 percent of the water will be lost to evaporation alone. To maximize both water savings and your lawn's health, coordinate watering with the weather—watering on cool, windless mornings is best. While watering, make sure to saturate the turf's root zones, and then let the soil dry. Watering too frequently can result in shallow roots and make your lawn vulnerable to disease.
2. Ready, aim, sprinkle!
Sprinklers that water more pavement than grass are wasting water and money! Whether you have a standard hose-fed sprinkler or an automatic irrigation system, make sure that the water goes to where it's needed most. Different parts of your yard have different water needs, so you should take into account sun exposure and your plants' water needs when setting up your irrigation system.
3. Less is more
Invest in a micro-irrigation system to water plants, trees, and garden beds. Compared to conventional sprinklers, micro-irrigation systems, such as drip hoses, use 20 to 50 percent less water by minimizing evaporation, runoff, and overspray.
4. Automate your estate
Not sure when your lawn or garden needs to be watered? Consider installing soil moisture sensors or weather-based controllers to help streamline and simplify the watering process. These devices ensure that your landscape is perfectly watered by adjusting your irrigation schedule to changing soil moisture and weather conditions.
5. Hire a WaterSense irrigation partner
The smartest way to save the most water and money is to hire a WaterSense irrigation partner to audit, design, install, or maintain your irrigation system. These irrigation professionals have successfully completed a WaterSense labeled certification program that emphasizes water efficiency, so they bring targeted expertise to the job.
Attention Shoppers: WaterSense Labeled Products Hitting Shelves Soon
More than 30 models of high-efficiency toilets (HETs), the first product category to earn the WaterSense label, are now labeled and available for purchase. Consumers will now have better toilet choices that protect our water supply without sacrificing performance. Your plumber, retailer, or localplumbing supply store can easily order any of the WaterSense labeled toilets, and several models will be available in retail stores later this summer.
Contrary to popular myths that less water leads to poor performance, these WaterSense labeled HETs get the job done. Improvements in design and technology since the first generation of “low-flow” toilets in the early 1990s mean that today's HETs bear little resemblance to their predecessors. These toilets are independently tested to meet performance standards as well as efficiency criteria, which means they use less water than standard 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf) toilets—and when compared to older models, the savings really add up! Learn more about WaterSense labeled HETs.
As with all toilets, WaterSense labeled HETs will be available in a range of price points. And with water savings, as well as rebates of $25 to $175 offered by many local utilities for replacing older toilets, an HET can pay for itself in only a few years. In fact, the average family of four could save approximately $2,000 over the lifetime of a new HET by replacing just one older-model toilet.
Check out the most current list of HETs that have earned the WaterSense label for efficiency and performance, and then check with your plumber or a retail store near you.
WaterSense Labels Two Certification Programs for Irrigation Auditors
Fore! With the recent additions of the Irrigation Association's (IA's) Certified Golf Irrigation Auditor and Certified Landscape Irrigation Auditor programs, the number of WaterSense labeled professional certification programs is up to four. In May, these programs joined two other previously labeled IA programs—an irrigation contractor and an irrigation designer program—in earning the WaterSense label. WaterSense is excited to announce its new partnerships with landscape and golf irrigation auditors who are certified through these programs to provide quality service for residential, commercial, and golf irrigation system audits.
Professionals who passed exams for either of these auditor programs after April 1, 2007, are eligible to apply for WaterSense partnership. Auditors who passed exams prior to April 1, 2007, are eligible for partnership upon renewal in 2008. As these irrigation auditors become WaterSense partners, consumers will soon be able to search our online listing to find a local partner nearby.
An irrigation auditor can:
- Analyze landscape or turf irrigation water use
- Make maintenance recommendations
- Perform water audits
- Develop irrigation base schedules
A system audit is an important part of maintaining an irrigation system and should be performed periodically to check for malfunctions and to ensure efficient watering. When performing an audit, a WaterSense irrigation partner will run a series of procedures to collect and compile data that show how uniformly an irrigation system is distributing water. WaterSense irrigation partners can then provide customers with suggestions and recommendations for saving on water bills, as well as achieving greener, healthier golf courses or lawns.
Featured Product: High-Efficiency Bathroom Sink Faucets and Accessories
If every bathroom sink faucet in the United States were retrofitted to meet draft WaterSense specifications, we could save more than 60 billion gallons—that's enough water to supply Honolulu for a year!
What greets you every morning when you brush your teeth and will soon bear the WaterSense label? High-efficiency bathroom sink faucets and faucet accessories! EPA is pleased to announce that it has developed a draft specification for these products to receive the WaterSense label. Once the draft specification is finalized later this year, manufacturers will be able to start certifying their faucets and faucet accessories to bear the WaterSense label. You should be able to find WaterSense labeled faucets and faucet accessories, such as aerators and laminar flow devices, on retail shelves starting in 2008!
WaterSense Labeled Faucets and Accessories by the Numbers
- 1.5: Maximum flow rate of WaterSense labeled faucets and accessories in gallons per minute (gpm).
- 32: Percent decrease in flow rate from standard bathroom sink faucets.
- 570: Gallons of water a household could save annually by retrofitting bathroom sink faucets to meet the draft WaterSense specification.
- 11 or 13: Months it would take to recover the cost of a WaterSense labeled high-efficiency bathroom sink faucet through water and energy savings (11 months for electric water heating systems, 13 months for natural gas water heating systems).
In keeping with the WaterSense philosophy to label products that are at least 20 percent more efficient than conventional models, the proposed flow rate for these faucets and faucet accessories is set at 1.5 gpm—a 32 percent reduction from the standard bathroom sink faucet flow rate of 2.2 gpm. For homes that do not need new sink installations, aerators are sold for a few dollars apiece at local retailers and can easily be used to retrofit existing faucets to meet the draft WaterSense specification and save you water and money. Both bathroom sink faucets and faucet accessories with the WaterSense label will perform well, even in homes with low water pressure.
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