# How much water y'all use?



## CAB (Mar 21, 2019)

I'm curious what's considered normal water usage per thousand (regardless of all your variables), for people like yourself that understand ETo. Am I grossly under watering?

I'm roughly around 650gal total for one morning of turf zones with ~45min soak delay between their second run. That's roughly 41 gallons per thousand? 767gal if you include shrubbery. I water roughly every three days, depending on conditions and fungus pressure.

16k turf total, roughly 2/3 Bermuda and 1/3 Zoysia, all irrigated. Six zones on hunter I20 SS PRB(40psi) rotors with 2gpm nozzles. Two zones on hunter mp rotators, one of which is shrubbery.

Bermuda is in/on subgrade quality rocky clay on a clay shelf with no drainage, and the zoysia is in/on sandy loam with fast draining vole tunnels  .

CEC ranges from 5.8 meq/100g to 13.7 meq/100g, but mostly toward 6.

OM ranges from 3.1% ENR106 to 6.6% ENR176, but mostly towards the low end, probably <4%.

OpenSprinkler compensates program run times based on this ETo:



My water usage this morning was around 767.5gal, which included shrubs:


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

620 gallons = 1in of water to 1000sqft.

I do around 0.5in every 3 days in the peak of summer.

You used 650 gallons to 18k sqft. That's around 1/18 of an in of water. That's barely anything assuming your flow meter is correct.

Check the ET irrigation thread for more info.


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## CAB (Mar 21, 2019)

G-man to the rescue. Thank you! Good info. I'll crank up the run times.

I've read your great ET and irrigation guide writeup very carefully last year and again yesterday, thanks for that!


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## Wiley (Dec 2, 2019)

We've been unseasonably dry here so I've been shooting for 2 inches a week (in line with ET calculations) covering about 7,600 sq ft. Knowing that 623  gallons will give 1 inch per 1,000 the total = a lot in gallons.


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## BadDogPSD (Jul 9, 2020)

Here in the dry windy high desert I water 3 x's per week, shooting for 1/2" per day, so 1 1/2" per week. 11 zones irrigating just under 10,000 square feet of turf, it's around 60,000 gallons a month.


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## CAB (Mar 21, 2019)

Took 500 minutes (8.3h) to put down ~4000 gallons, roughly .36in/M for 18k. I was aiming for quarter inch, but the ETo was at 139%. So if you adjust it down 39%, my baseline program is around .22in/M?

So if there is zero rain, I can expect a two month water bill of about $1157 ($593 of that would be sewage charge) for turf. If I get an irrigation meter (~$3500), the two month water usage for just the lawn is around $563. A lot of assumptions in that quick math, just spitballing here. Roughly a 12 warmer month ROI, so <3y to break even on irrigation meter install? Sounds worth it.

Anyone have or get an irrigation meter? Worth it?


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## SCGrassMan (Dec 17, 2017)

@CAB - I also got a quote for a separate meter that's about a 3 year ROI. It's been 3 years since I put irrigation in and haven't done it 😂

I have 3000 sq ft and it's $150-$250 a month for me (I don't have the gallons handy) for irrigation and 2-3 showers a day for my wife lol


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## Kdog060 (May 19, 2021)

I have roughly around 5K of turf and I used approx 1500 gallons last week. My controller indicated I watered for approx 3 hrs to put that down. I use Rachio and the flex daily schedule but limit it to 3 days a week to avoid more frequent watering.


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## Lawndress (Jul 9, 2020)

Not a clue. I'm on well.


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