For a healthy, drought and stress tolerant lawn and landscape, use less water adopting water savvy habits also is essential to maintain and extending your community’s water supply, especially during peak use. Water efficient habits will result in a healthier lawn and landscape, in addition to conserving water and saving money. With some simple practices and new technology, existing irrigation systems can be made more efficient. Lowering your water bill, reducing run off, and eliminating waste.
Seasons change so should your system
Adjust the watering schedule regularly to conform to seasonal weather conditions.
Play Zone Defense
Schedule each individual zone in your irrigation system to account for the type of sprinkler, sun or shade exposure and the soil type for the specific area.
Make it a Date
Inspect your irrigation monthly, check for leaks, broken or clogged heads, and other problems or engage a certified irrigation professional to regularly check your system.
Get Smart
Climate or soil moisture sensor, based smart controllers evaluate weather or soil moisture conditions, then calculates and automatically adjusts the irrigation schedule to meet the specific needs of your landscape.
Flip to a Switch
Rain shut-off switches, turn off your system in rainy weather and help compensate for natural rainfall. This inexpensive device can be retrofitted to almost any system.
Easy Does It
Install low volume micro irrigation for gardens, trees and shrubs. Micro sprinklers irrigate slowly and minimize evaporation, run off, and overspray.
Watch the Clock
Water when the sun is low or down, winds are calm and temperatures are cool, between the evening and early morning. To reduce evaporation. You can lose as much as 30 percent of water to evaporation by watering mid-day.
Less is More
Saturate root zones and let the soil dry. Watering too much and to frequently results in shallow roots, weed growth, disease and fungus.
The Importance of Distribution Uniformity
An irrigation system is said to have “good uniformity” when a nearly equal amount of water is deposited on each square foot of irrigation surface area.
Sprinkler uniformity affects sprinkler run time the following table shows how different uniformities affect how much water needs to be applied to meet a plants water requirements
| DU % |
Water the Plant Needs |
Amount of water you need
to apply to keep the Dry
. Areas Green . |
| 30% |
1” |
3.33 inches |
| 50% |
1” |
2.00 inches |
| 70% |
1” |
1.42 inches |
Soil intake Rate
When scheduling irrigation run times it is very important to be aware of the type of soil you have in your yard. Each soil type has a different infiltration rate.
| Soil Type |
Turf Soil Intake Rate |
| Sandy Soils |
0.30 to 0.50 Inches per hours |
| Loamy Soils |
0.15 to 0.30 Inches per hours |
| Clay Soils |
0.05 to 0.15 Inches per hours |
On heavier clay soils run off will occur in minutes and lighter sandier soils require longer more frequent irrigation.
>> Getting Started
>> Efficient Irrigation Ideas
>> Teaching an Old Irrigation System Some New Tricks
>> Interesting Facts
>> City of Calgary - In Ground (pdf)
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