Sprinkler timers are a great addition to your irrigation system because they help deliver the correct amount of water to your plants. They also help you cut down on water waste, which means more savings as you maintain the beauty and health of your landscape.
6. Lawn Sprinkler and Irrigation Systems. If you have a lawn sprinkler and irrigation system, you should know that it's naturally going to work harder during the warm summer months. If your irrigation system isn't programmed correctly or it develops a leak, you might find your water bill creeping higher than usual.
Some hose timers reduce water pressure due to small solenoid valve openings and other restrictions that are smaller than the diameter of the faucet or the hose.
A typical residential irrigation system may have four (4) irrigation zones and use 10 to 15 gallons of water per minute. Although that may not seem unreasonable, usage during one month can add up to thousands of gallons.
Watering with a typical sprinkler using a standard 5/8" garden hose for one hour uses about 1,020 gallons of water; if you water three times per week, that's about 12,240 gallons per month.
On average, homeowners might see a 30% to 60% increase in their water bills during peak irrigation months. For a $100 monthly water bill, this could mean an increase to $130 to $160. To minimize the impact: Use efficient irrigation systems.
The average system uses approximately 15-16 gallons per minute, per station.
Lawn Watering Practices
Frequent watering encourages shallow root growth and unhealthy grass. Deep, less frequent watering encourages grass roots to grow deeper into the soil reservoir from which to draw moisture. Deep roots also mean the lawn will be less affected by surface drying.
A typical sprinkler system with pop-up rotary heads uses approximately 15 to 16 gallons of water per minute per station. An Irrigreen smart sprinkler system uses approximately 6 gallons per minute per head when spraying about 30 feet.
Uses less water
Sprinklers project water into the air and over plants, allowing some of it to drift in the wind or evaporate from leaves. But hand watering allows gardeners to direct water precisely where it's needed, minimizing drift and evaporation.
Installing a water timer is one of the simplest ways to streamline your lawn care. A water timer will save you money, make your home more green, and give you back hours that you would have spent watering.
If you forget to disconnect your hose before temperatures begin to drop, your hose can freeze, and suddenly you have ice in the spigot and pipes inside your home. Left unattended, the frozen water can continue to expand until it bursts the supply pipe leading to the spigot itself.
Hose length
The length of your hose can seriously affect the garden hose flow rate, as the longer the hose, the less water pressure there will be. This is because as water travels down the hose, it can lose pressure and offer far less flow rate, commonly referred to as friction loss.
An unusually high water bill is most often caused by a leak or change in water use. Some common causes of high water bills include: A leaking toilet, or a toilet that continues to run after being flushed, most common. A dripping faucet; a faucet drip can waster 20 gallons or more of water a day.
According to the EPA, during hot summer months, a household's outdoor water use can be as high as 70% of its total usage and single broken sprinkler head can waste up to 25,000 gallons of water over six months.
If you're not sure how much time it takes for your sprinklers to spray an inch of water, you're not alone. A fixed spray head nozzle might take ~30 minutes to apply 1 inch of water, whereas a rotary nozzle could take 3x as long to apply the same amount.
An average family of four typically uses 4,000-5,000 gallons of water a month.
The ideal watering schedule is once or twice per week, for about 25 to 30 minutes each time. Taking care of a lawn doesn't have to be an overwhelming, all-consuming task.
The best time to water grass is early in the morning, between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., as the cooler air and calmer breezes allow water droplets to reach the grass roots before evaporating. Watering during this period helps in preventing wasteful evaporation and the risk of lawn diseases associated with nighttime watering.
If it is not raining, the lawn can need as much as 1 hour for rotor zones and 10-15 minutes on spray zones. We recommend watering 3-4 times per week. If you still notice dry spots, we recommend supplemental watering in between regularly scheduled water times.
Watering 101
Your lawn needs 1 to 1 ½ inches of water per week. A typical in-ground sprinkler system provides ½” of watering, per zone, in a half an hour. This would mean that you need to run each zone of your sprinkler system for 30 minutes, 3 times a week to sufficiently hydrate your lawn.
If you have a low-flow showerhead installed, you can expect to use about two gallons of water per minute, equalling 20 gallons throughout a 10-minute shower. With a standard showerhead, around half a gallon more water will emerge each minute, so a 10-minute shower would use somewhere close to 25 gallons.
On average, a sprinkler system uses around 1,200 watts per hour. To put this into perspective, running a sprinkler for an hour each day can increase your monthly electricity bill by around $18. This may not seem like a lot, but it can add up over time.