U.S. EPA Recognizes IAPMO R&T to Certify Commercial Pre-Rinse Spray Valves to the WaterSense® Product Labeling Program

Ontario, Calif. — IAPMO R&T, North America’s premier plumbing and mechanical product certification agency, is now licensed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to certify commercial pre-rinse spray valves to the WaterSense® consumer labeling program.

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 or better than conventional models on the market.

Pre-rinse spray valves are commonly used in commercial and institutional kitchens to remove food waste from dishes prior to dishwashing, accounting for nearly one-third of the water used in a typical commercial kitchen. Pre-rinse spray valves bearing the WaterSense label will use no more than 1.28 gallons per minute, 20 percent less than the federal requirements.

The EPA estimates that replacing one commercial pre-rinse spray valve with a WaterSense-labeled model could help commercial kitchens save more than 7,000 gallons of water per year — the amount it would take to wash nearly 5,000 racks of dishes in a commercial dishwasher. There are energy benefits, as well, as replacement could save a commercial kitchen annually as much as 6,200 cubic feet of natural gas that would have otherwise been used to heat the water.

The WaterSense program offers consumers a simple way to make product-purchasing choices that conserve water with no sacrifice to quality or performance. IAPMO R&T has been working closely with the EPA to offer ANSI-accredited certification of these products to the efficiency standards necessary to earn the WaterSense mark.

Manufacturers wishing to have their commercial pre-rinse spray valves identified as complying with the WaterSense specification 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.

The EPA will release the commercial pre-rinse spray valve WaterSense specification on Sept. 19, at which point manufacturers may begin bringing their products to IAPMO R&T for testing and certification.

For more information on having products listed, contact Brenda Madonna (brenda.madonna@iapmort.org) at (909) 472-4100, or for more information on the WaterSense Specification for Commercial Pre-Rinse Spray Valves, visit http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/products/prsv.html.