Bainbridge Island’s own water conservation service

Why did everything get smart except your water?

We’re a local, family business that helps you use water wisely. We don’t just identify inefficiencies, we fix them right then and there, and hand you a report card that shows the impact you made.

Book a Tune-Up Learn More
A Sage Conservation technician and a homeowner share a high-five on her front porch after a Tune-Up
1 hourfor a typical Tune-Up
10–25%less water used indoors
40–55%less water outdoors on a recent irrigation visit
GuaranteedNot happy? We make it right, no questions asked.

How it works Interior

A one-hour Tune-Up, start to finish

Think of it as an oil change for your plumbing. We take what you already have and make it work better, right then and there.

  1. A smiling homeowner, softly out of focus behind a glass of water
    1

    We listen first

    A short conversation about how your household uses water: what works, what drips, and what bugs you.

  2. A technician times a toilet tank refill with a yellow stopwatch
    2

    We measure and fix

    Most companies stop at a list of problems. We time every faucet, shower, and toilet, track down leaks, fit high-performance aerators, and calibrate toilets while we’re there.

  3. A tablet showing a Sage Conservation report card: 25% less water and 30.8 gallons saved a day
    3

    You get a report card

    Before-and-after numbers for your home: gallons, hot water, energy, and carbon, starting the day we leave.

  4. A technician installs a high-performance showerhead
    4

    Take it a step further

    For a deeper impact, save 20–50% by upgrading your fixtures with innovative water products that we’ve thoroughly researched and tested.

    See retrofit options →

These aren’t the weak showerheads you got for free years ago. Better fluid engineering means a strong, comfortable spray on less water. We’ve spent eight years testing nearly every product on the market, and we only install the ones we’d use at home.

How it works Irrigation

Irrigation Assessment and Tune-Up Coming soon!

Sprinklers are where the biggest savings hide, and island aquifer levels hit their low point every fall, after a summer of watering. We’re getting ready to bring our approach outdoors. Here’s how it will work.

  1. A pop-up sprinkler spraying over a lawn, with a rainbow in the mist
    1

    We run every zone

    We walk your whole system and check each zone for broken heads, overspray, misaligned arcs, blocked or sunken heads, and leaks.

  2. Rylan tightens an outdoor spigot fitting with a wrench
    2

    We tune it up

    We make the fixes on the spot: leaky spigots, arc and rotation adjustments, nozzle swaps, and a smarter schedule that waters deeply, less often, in the early morning.

  3. An irrigation report card showing 40 to 55 percent less water outdoors
    3

    You get a plan

    An irrigation report card plus a zone-by-zone work order that any irrigation pro can finish. It includes a smart controller recommendation if your timer can’t adjust for weather.

Coming soon! Irrigation Assessment: $399 for 1 to 4 zones, plus $20 per extra zone. A recent trial visit cut outdoor water use 40–55%.

Join the waitlist

Case studies

See your impact right away

Every visit ends with a report card showing the water, hot water, and carbon you save starting that day, and the savings keep going for years. As a bonus, most visits pay for themselves within one to two years. Flip through some recent case studies below.

Why water?

1

Our population is growing, but our aquifers are limited

All of Bainbridge’s water comes from aquifers under our feet, and the only real refill is rain. That rain takes decades or even centuries to work its way down to the deep aquifers many of our wells rely on.1

85–90%of the refill is rain soaking into island soil. There’s no river, mountain reservoir, or mainland pipeline.
3–25 inchesa day is how slowly groundwater moves through the ground.
CenturiesWater can stay in our aquifers for hundreds of years or more, so what we pump today took generations to arrive.

Simplified cross-section, not to scale. Figures from the City of Bainbridge Island’s groundwater fact sheet, based on USGS modeling.1

212–419

new neighbors a year

The growth range in the City’s 2025 groundwater model, with 1,977 new homes targeted by 2044.3,6

25 ft

drop in the deep aquifer

USGS found the Fletcher Bay aquifer fell about 25 feet from pre-development to 2008.5

5–6%

less summer rain ahead

Projected for April to September by late century, with harder storms that run off instead of soaking in.3

KPUD

and the City are watching

They track aquifer levels together. A 2025 peer review warned that big pumping increases could squeeze the margin.1,4

Are we using too much? The honest answer is maybe.

Current use “could be sustainable or unsustainable.”

That’s the City’s own Groundwater Management Plan, shared at a public open house in May 2026.2 When the plan was peer reviewed, the reviewers’ advice was clear: conservation and better stormwater management offer the best return on effort.4

2

It’s about energy, too

Water is heavy. Pumping it, cleaning it, heating it, and cleaning it again takes a surprising amount of electricity, and most of it never shows up on your water bill.

  1. Pump it upWells lift water from hundreds of feet below the island.
  2. Treat itYour utility filters and disinfects it.
  3. Pump it to youMore pumping pushes it through pipes to your tap.
  4. Heat itThe big one. Your water heater does most of the work.
  5. Pump and treat it againWastewater gets moved and cleaned all over again.
18%

of a typical home’s energy goes to heating water.7

About 2%

of all U.S. energy runs drinking water and wastewater systems. In many cities, those plants are the single biggest energy user.9

Energy one Bainbridge home saves every year

Water heating avoided382 kWh
Utility pumping and treatment36 kWh

From a recent Bainbridge report card. Heating a gallon in an electric tank takes about 0.21 kWh, roughly 50 times what the utility spends pumping and treating it. Only the water-heating energy shows up on your own bill.8

On a private well? Every gallon you save is electricity your well pump doesn’t spend lifting it. Solar panels aren’t in everyone’s budget. This is.

Island impact

What if the whole island did a Tune-Up?

We took one real report card from August 2026 and scaled its savings per person across Bainbridge’s 24,621 residents, the same way our methodology does. Slide to see what happens as more neighbors join.

100%
About 24,621 people

Dollars use that household’s water, sewer, and power rates. Real savings vary by water system and by how each household uses water.

Every year, Bainbridge would save

54,154,731 gallons left in our aquifers
  • Dollars that stay in island households$735,294
  • Carbon savings, in cars off the road434
  • Olympic swimming pools of water82
  • Share of all water pumped from island wells5.5–8.3%
  • Gallons saved over 10 years542 million

Ways to save

Simple, upfront pricing

Every home starts with a Tune-Up. From there, take it as far as you like.

TLC Tune-Up

Start here
$299$199about one hour

Early adopter price, for a limited time

Saves 10–25% of indoor water

  • Every fixture checked and every leak tracked down
  • High-performance aerators and a toilet tune-up
  • Up to 30 minutes of simple leak repair
  • A free hand-held showerhead
  • Your personal report card

Covers two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a utility room. Extra bathrooms are $25 each.

Book a Tune-Up

Irrigation Assessment

Coming soon
$3991 to 4 zones

A recent visit cut outdoor use 40–55%

  • Every zone run and checked for broken heads, overspray, and leaks
  • Recommended arc, rotation, and nozzle fixes for every zone
  • A zone-by-zone plan and a watering schedule
  • Smart controller recommendations

Extra zones are $20 each. Island aquifer levels hit their low point every fall, after a summer of watering.

Join the waitlist

Custom Retrofits

Go further

Saves 20–50% with smart upgrades

  • Thermostatic shower valveSaves up to 5 gal of hot water per shower$40
  • Toilet fill valve replacementPer toilet$89
  • Delta H2Okinetic showerhead1.4–1.7 GPM, five settings$150
  • Kitchen foot pedalSaves up to 40% at the sink, hands-free$550
Ask about retrofits

Prices are estimates, not quotes. If older plumbing turns up a surprise, extra time is $75 an hour, and we always talk it through with you before the clock starts.

Who we work with

Houses, multi-family, and small businesses

A technician fine-tunes a kitchen faucet aerator

Houses

The full indoor Tune-Up, with Irrigation Assessments coming soon for homes with sprinklers. One trial irrigation visit saved about 39,000 gallons in a single season.

A technician measures a bathroom faucet’s flow with a measuring cup

Multi-family

Condos, apartments, townhomes, ADUs, duplexes, and HOAs. We tune up every unit in one visit, with shared-sprinkler assessments coming soon. Hot water savings land on each household’s own power bill, even when water is included in rent or dues.

Ask us about per-unit pricing.
A technician carrying his tool bag and kit into a local café

Small businesses

Shops, offices, studios, and cafés have restrooms, break rooms, and kitchens that waste water too. Same Tune-Up, sized to your space.

Ask us for a quote.

About us

A small family business with a big island-sized goal

We want a water Tune-Up to be as normal on Bainbridge as an oil change. We’ve spent eight years testing nearly every water-saving product out there, and now we bring the good stuff to our neighbors.

  • We fix it on the spotWe don’t just point out problems. We solve them while we’re there.
  • Good local jobsLiving-wage work that brings neighbors together around a common good.
  • Make it rightIf you’re not happy with anything, we fix it. No questions asked.
  • Change starts at homeLiving up to our values, one household at a time.
A smiling homeowner in her front yard next to a Water-Smart Home sign
Spot a Water-Smart Home sign? That’s a neighbor who did a Tune-Up.
Bernie the dog riding in the bow of a kayak on a lake
Bernie, on duty.
An old aerator taken apart in a technician’s palm
An old aerator, retired.

Book a Tune-Up

Let’s make your home water-smart

Send us a request, or call or email. We serve homes and small businesses all across Bainbridge Island.

  1. We confirm the details. Scope and price are settled before anything is scheduled.
  2. We spend about an hour at your home. Measuring, fixing, and fine-tuning.
  3. You get your report card. Pay by card or check that day, or by emailed invoice.
Call
206-715-1571
Email
info@sageconservation.com
If we miss your call, leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Request a visit

* required
What can we help with?

Report card

How we calculate your savings

Read this first. Your report card is an estimate, not a meter reading. We measure how fast your fixtures flow. We can’t measure how long your showers run or how often the dishwasher goes, and behavior drives a big share of water use. Treat the numbers as a well-sourced projection of what the hardware makes possible. What you actually save is up to your household.

1. Where the water numbers start

Your household baseline is 38.5 gallons per person per day, the current U.S. single-family average from the Water Research Foundation’s 2026 Residential End Uses of Water study. If you share your own water bill, we use that instead. Use is split across fixtures using that study and a 2025 analysis of 26,441 smart-metered homes in 39 U.S. cities.

2. What we actually measure

  • Flow rate: a timed fill of a 2-cup container, before and after. 7.5 ÷ seconds = gallons per minute
  • Toilets: tank refill time before and after adjustment. Savings scale by the ratio of the two times.
  • Leaks: a timed drip rate. (86,400 ÷ seconds per tablespoon) ÷ 256 = gallons per day. A leak only counts as saved if we fixed it.

Fixtures we didn’t service are left out entirely.

3. How dollars are calculated

Bainbridge has more than 100 independent water systems, so we price your savings on your own utility’s rates: City of Bainbridge and Kitsap PUD tiered brackets, Meadowmeer’s single rate, or, for private wells, the electricity it takes to lift each gallon. City sewer is billed by volume, so indoor savings lower it, but irrigation savings never get a sewer credit. Electricity uses your Puget Sound Energy tier. Ten-year totals add each year at its own projected rate, using increases already approved or requested.

4. Energy

Hot water saved × 0.208 kWh per gallon for a standard electric tank, or 0.069 for a heat pump. We also show your utility’s pumping and treatment energy at 0.004 kWh per gallon, labeled as context because it never reaches your bill.

5. Carbon and the fun comparisons

We use the EPA’s marginal emission rate for our own Northwest grid region, 1,515.7 lbs of CO₂ per MWh, rather than a national average. Treat carbon as an illustration, not accounting. The orca comparison is just weight: a gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs and an orca about 8,000 lbs.

6. Island-wide figures

We scale your savings per person across Bainbridge’s population of 24,621, rather than multiplying one household by a house count.

7. What we don’t subtract

Making the aerators and showerheads, plus driving to your home and back, comes to roughly 20 kg of CO₂. That’s offset within the first month, so we leave it out of the headline numbers. We’d rather you know than wonder.

About us