1 inch of water on 5000 sq ft of landscape per week over the month is 25 HCF.
The poster has a 4000 SF house (two-story) on a 9000 sf lot, halve the house and add 50% for garage and driveway, you ‘ve got 3000 SF of house footprint. 6000SF of land.
if they went from 4 or 6 minutes every other day to 6 or 8 minutes, that’s an even bigger jump. i.e. 50% or 33% respectively.
Minutes don’t matter, flow rate matters. Because flowrate controls water lay down and coverage.[/quote]
Hmm….well I don’t even think he increased the minutes by 2 minutes. I went to check now and the station run times say 3 minutes total.
I have to confess to not know much at all about anything to do with the yard. We have a gardener that comes every week and they handle all of that. In fact, he told me once best not to mess with the controls.
I just looked at it says 100% strength. I guess you can adjust the strength. I’m not sure what it was at before.
But I’m going to reduce the settings now. I got the meter reading. Sad to say I’ve never read a water meter in my life before today. (You can bet that will change!).
There is a box in front of the house. I never even knew where the water box was. But you can always see what the meter is at. You just have to lift up the cover and see the reading.
I guess they ignore the last 2 numbers. Mine had 6 digits. They just take the first 4.
My meter reading wasn’t wrong. Still hard to believe our bill was higher not even being here almost the entire 2 months of the cycle and it was more.
Good lesson and good to know.
PS. Also, for those of you interested, they also just emailed me this from the water company just now. I’m going to set up a scheduled meeting.
“We can offer a free Residential Water Survey. A Surveyor will come to your home and teach you to read the meter, look for leaks, and assess the flow of your interior fixtures. He/she will then run your irrigation system and provide recommendations for improvements and a recommended watering schedule.
We schedule our appointments Monday thru Friday during different time slots. Our appointments generally take about 45 minutes to an hour. Would you be interested in participating in this program?”
