Are you sure that the HOA has the authority to tell residents when they can/cant water?

I know cities can impose watering restrictions and ordinances but does an HOA have the authority to do that?

What are your plans to enforce that people stick to their allotted times?

What about if one lawn is on more of a slope and needs more water than another lawn?

What if someone doesn't care about their lawn and has no interest in watering but someone else is very into their lawn and irrigation and wants to water more frequently than you decide to allow?

What if someone wants to apply fertilizer and water it in on a day/time that isn't their allotted time?

What if someone has different sprinkler heads than someone else so the duration that they need to water is longer than someone else?

Also how are you going to account for differences in water usage based on lot size? If you had two lots of .75 acres being watered together or two lots of 2.0 acres being watered together the latter is going to be using far more water at once, so in theory you could have nearly 3 lots of .75 acres going at the same time using the same amount of water as two 2.0 acre lots.


Personally I think this a very slippery slope and could result in having some very pissed off homeowners depending on how you decide to implement this.

One solution could be to designate days of the week that houses can water on. Give each house two days per week that are their irrigation days or something, leaving it up to them to decide when and how long to irrigate on their specific days. But personally I don't think you should get to dictate what time of day or how long each homeowner gets to irrigate.

 

Thanks for your comments. This is a small, close knit community and the only reason we have an HOA is the community well. We just had to replace the pump as it wore out in less than ten years. Everyone knows it's not enforceable, but everyone agrees to abide by the community decision. No one is dictating anything, we're trying to make a community decision and the reason for this post is to get outside opinions on how to handle the situation. We've decided that all times will be equal regardless of the number of zones.

Your comment on not watering every day is good. With nine homes we can do M/W/F every week but I'm not sure watering once a week is enough.

 

What about 4 houses on odd number calendar days and 5 houses on even number calendar days? Then amongst those grouping of houses they can come to an agreement as to which set of two can water at which times.

 

Good idea, but not sure if the Rainbird system can do that. Otherwise, it's M/W/F for some and T/Th/Sat for others.

 

If you want, you can calculate how much run time each zone will need and then try to water each house, then you can decide odd/evens days. Here is a long read about the calculations: ET and irrigation guide

But, the short way is to place multiple empty tuna cans in a zone and figure out how long it takes to get 0.5in in the tuna cans. Then water that amount of time every 3 days.

 

The only reason we have an HOA is because the contractor didn't want each home to have its own well. Instead, we have a common well. Our pump failed and the well guys said we overburdened it with too much watering. That's why we're voluntarily going to a watering schedule. It's not contentious at all.

 

My thoughts on your questions:

It‘s important to prevent the grass being wet in warm and humid conditions any longer than necessary, because this leads to diseases like fungus. For that reason, watering in the evening is a really bad idea. The best time for watering is in the (early) morning (4-8am).

The intervals also depend on soil type and grass type too. Clay soil needs different watering schedules than sandy soil. Same for grass types with deeper roots and more draught tolerance than the opposite. Usually you don‘t water your lawn every day. It makes more sense to water it every 3 to 5 days, also depending on weather conditions. Lawn needs about 1 inch of water a week.

Finding a schedule, that works for all home owners with maybe very different approaches to lawn care, sounds very challenging to me. Good luck!

 

Check for the actual water usage in Gallons per Minute or Hour. Some systems put down more or less water at the same time. This should be the deciding factor on how many zones are running at the same time and for how long.

9 homes with a limit of 2 at a time? Do 2 homes each day of the week between sunrise and 10am.

Watering in the heat of the day is wasted water and watering late afternoon and night leads to disease.