U.S. EPA Approves IAPMO R&T to Issue WaterSense® Certification for Soil Moisture-Based Irrigation Controllers

IAPMO R&T, North America’s premier third-party testing and certification body for plumbing, mechanical and water treatment products, has been transitionally approved and licensed to certify soil moisture-based irrigation controllers (also known as soil moisture sensors or SMSs) to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new final WaterSense^® specification.

Soil moisture-based irrigation controllers can detect the amount of moisture in the ground beneath the landscape and override scheduled irrigation when plants don’t need water, reducing water waste and promoting plant health. They can be stand-alone controllers or “add-on” or “plug-in” devices that can be used in conjunction with an existing clock-timed controller to help it water more efficiently, according to the EPA.

“IAPMO R&T is proud to have been a major partner for the EPA WaterSense program since its inception, and we are pleased to offer certification to this new EPA WaterSense specification,” IAPMO Group Chief Technical Services Officer Tom Palkon said. “As the leading provider of EPA WaterSense certifications, we always strive to make the process convenient and straightforward for our clients and the industry.”

The EPA anticipates that installing a WaterSense-labeled SMS can save an average home with an automatic landscape irrigation system more than 15,000 gallons of water annually. In the future, replacing clock-timers in all residential irrigation systems across the United States with SMSs that earn the WaterSense label could save more than 390 billion gallons of water each year, according to the EPA.

The specification, which was released today, may be viewed HERE.

IAPMO R&T has been a licensed provider of WaterSense certification since 2007, certifying the first high-efficiency toilet (HET) to the standard in April of that year. To date, IAPMO R&T has certified thousands of lavatory faucet, toilet, urinal, showerhead and weather-based irrigation controller models to the WaterSense specifications. Products bearing the WaterSense label must not only save water, but also perform as well as or better than conventional models on the market.

Manufacturers wishing to have their products identified as complying with WaterSense specifications must have them certified as such by a qualified third-party certification body such as IAPMO R&T, which is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a provider of certification services to WaterSense specifications.

For more information about the WaterSense program, visit https://www.epa.gov/watersense.