WaterSense Suggests Sprinkler Spruce-Up For Spring

Posted by Heidi Schwartz

A broken or missing sprinkler head could waste as much as 25,000 gallons of water and more than $90 over a six-month irrigation season. To promote irrigation system maintenance this spring, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) WaterSense program is encouraging facility managers to check their systems.

As the weather warms up across the country, utilities, retailers, and irrigation professionals will remind customers to spruce up their sprinklers to ensure efficiency before they ramp up their outdoor watering. WaterSense provides its partners with tools to educate consumers about the importance of maintaining irrigation systems to promote healthy landscapes and water efficiency, in four simple steps—inspect, connect, direct, and select:

  • Inspect. Check your system for clogged, broken, or missing sprinkler heads. If you’re not the do-it-yourself type, go with a pro—look for an irrigation professional certified through a WaterSense labeled program.
  • Connect. Does water pool in your landscape or do you have large wet areas? You could have a leak in your system. A leak about as small as the tip of a ballpoint pen (or 1/32nd of an inch) can waste about 6,300 gallons of water per month.
  • Direct. Are you watering the driveway, building, or sidewalk instead of the grass? Redirect sprinklers to apply water only to the landscape.
  • Select. An improperly scheduled irrigation controller can waste a lot of water and money. Update your system’s schedule with the seasons, or select a WaterSense labeled controller to take the guesswork out of scheduling.