Water Score for Multifamily Housing | US EPA (2024)

Benchmarking is a powerful energy and water management tool. EPA’s Water Score for multifamily buildings is generated by the ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager® tool and supported by WaterSense. The score is a 1 - 100 rating of how your building uses water compared to similar properties nationwide. If you are already tracking energy use in Portfolio Manager, getting your EPA Water Score is simple. All you need is a year of metered utility bills, so get your score and start saving!

Once you know your building’s score, use EPA’s tools and resources to find out how you can make changes or upgrades to save water, energy, and operating costs. What’s more, you can use your score to set your building apart from others in the market.

Find out how your multifamily building measures up:

Improve Your EPA Water Score

Looking for ways to reduce you water use and improve your score? Use the resources below to make your building more water- and energy-efficient.

Multifamily Water Assessment Worksheets

Multifamily property owners and managers can use WaterSense's Multifamily Housing Water Assessment Worksheets to inventory existing water-using fixtures, appliances, systems, and management practices. Information collected during a property water assessment will help identify and prioritize cost-effective water efficiency projects and best management practices to reduce water and energy use and save on operating costs.

The worksheets include detailed instructions for completing a water assessment of the multifamily property. For facilities that have assets that exceed the number of rows made available in the worksheets, supplemental worksheets can be found in the Excel workbook.

• Multifamily Housing Water Assessment Worksheets (docx) (1.2 MB) (Fillable Word Form)
• Supplemental Worksheets (xlsx) (Excel Workbook)

Multifamily Resource Guides

WaterSense has developed resource guides for the areas that usually contribute most substantially to water use in multifamily properties to help you understand, manage, and improve water use. Use the guides below to help improve your property’s score:

• Bathroom Resource Guide(15pp, 1,356K, About PDF)
• Residential Kitchen and LaundryGuide(16pp, 1,744K, About PDF)
• Landscaping and Irrigation Guide(16pp, 2,733K, About PDF))
• Mechanical Systems Guide(20pp, 2,788K, About PDF)
• Improving Water Management Using Advanced Metering Infrastructure: A Guide for Facility Managers (13 pp, 2,780K, About PDF)

Please contact the WaterSense Helpline for specific questions about the EPA Water Score and ways to save in multifamily buildings.