Irrigation System & Water Use
Irrigation System
It can be hard when you have a sprinkler system or just had your first system professionally installed to determine how much water your grass will need. When watering your yard, your sprinkler system should provide water to all areas until the top six to eight inches of soil is wet. This is where most turfgrass roots grow and are the secret to green lush grass. Don’t overwater your lawn that can be bad for your lawn and increase the number of weeds and mosquitoes.
As you adjust to your new system, you can tweak the settings to get it to where the topsoil is wet 6-8 inches deep and prevent drowning your lawn. On average, you will notice most lawns will need about one inch of water per week. During rainy months, you will greatly reduce the amount of watering needed by hardly running your irrigation system. This will save additional money on water during those times. Also, be sure you decrease the amount of time your system is running to avoid overwatering during rainy seasons. If you have a rain sensor, you won’t have to care or worry about this. It’s better if you get a rain sensor to avoid the problem of over watering and drowning your lawn.
Since your lawn requires an inch of water per week you can do this in one watering session or multiple to break up the amount of water your grass gets. Some people will do it twice a week providing half an inch of water to the soil.
Is My Grass Getting Enough Water?
Sprinkler System
You can easily determine this by checking the soil. You will want to check every fifteen minutes if this is your first time running your sprinkler system to ensure you are not over watering. If you use a screwdriver, you can see how deep the water has moved. I like to mark the time the soil reaches six to eight inches. This will be the appropriate amount of time you need to water your lawn. Cool huh?!
If you don’t want to stand out on your lawn and check every fifteen minutes, you can work out a simple equation. You can also do the math to figure out the flow rate from gallons per minute. This number is found on the manufacturer’s website. You will use 0.62 gallons in your math equation to get the number of minutes to run your sprinkler.
Multiply the sq ft of the area your watering by 0.62 gallons and then divide by the sprinkler flow rate you got from the manufacturer’s website. You can always look for more information about water flow rate. This will give you the number of minutes to run your irrigation system without getting a screw and standing out on your lawn.
