How long to water turf in 95120? (San Jose, Newark: how much, house, live)

[MediocreButArrogant]

I bought a house here a couple months ago and I'm sure the turf is getting way too much water because I'm using about 750 gallons of water a day, and the house is empty - we haven't moved in yet. A co-worker thinks the seller had really turned up the watering in order to make the lawns appear lush and healthy.

I have not yet been able to do the empty cat food cans on the lawn test to determine how much water the sprinklers are delivering per minute, so I'm just looking for some rough guidelines on how long and how frequently to water. Right now each zone in front is running for 20 minutes, every day, and each zone in the rear is running for 15 minutes every day. This is the same amount I water my turf in our Las Vegas house during the hottest part of summer, so I'm pretty sure it is way too much. The soil is also very moist.

I found this: San Jose Watering Tips

Are these reasonable value to use in the absence of any data on how much water my sprinklers are delivering? After I have that data, I was going to use this to determine how often and how long to water (Region 6):

http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8044.pdf

My gardener thinks everything is fine, but he's not the one paying the water bill.

[kdog]

Welcome to the hood, MBA. Even through I've owned my home here for a long time, I'm kind of in the same boat as you because we just put a new lawn in the backyard this year. I haven't gotten the watering all sorted out yet either. That San Jose chart is interesting. It suggests watering during the summer just four times a week, five minutes a zone, three times a day. How strange. So you're watering the hell out of it on some days but letting it go dry on others. I don't understand the logic in that, although maybe it has something to do with promoting deep root growth. I'm currently running each zone once every morning for six minutes. So that's 42 minutes a week versus the 60 minutes that San Jose is recommending. It seems to be plenty. I had an additional shorter run in the afternoon when the lawn was still new and it was still really hot, but the yard seemed way too wet. A lot of it probably depends on the sprinkler head GPH and I don't know what that is. I should probably do the empty can test you mentioned and find out.

So yeah, unless your sprinkler heads are really anemic, it appears you're over-watering by at least a factor of three.

[kdog]

Oh one more thing I might mention is that we keep our lawn on the long side by cutting with the mower on the highest setting. I believe that's better for the lawn because it holds in the moisture and so reduces the amount of water you need as well.

[mstnghu2]

I've had a lot of troube keeping my back lawn green in Newark due to hard clay-like soil. Up until about a month ago, I was watering 3-4 times a week, about 20 minutes per each section of lawn and was still frustrated that the lawn was still somewhat brown. I've now been watering about 40-45 minutes per section of lawn (takes a total of about 1 hr/15 minutes roughly) about every 5-6 days and am having good results. I've found that giving the lawn a really good thorough soaking less often seems to work better than multiple shorter times throughout the week. I'm using less water too. My water bill was getting high, so I've been experimenting with different watering methods and this seems to work best for me.

Most experts recommend to water in the early morning so that the water has time to soak in enough but still evaporates when the sun comes up to avoid mold/mildew. In warm summer months however, I water in the evening and let the water soak in all night long and try to avoid letting it evaporate. In the summer, days are warm enough that mold/mildew aren't a concern. As the days start getting cooler, you should probably switch to watering in the early morning though.

[MediocreButArrogant]

I'm just going to leave the run times the same for now, and cut down to three days a week from seven. That should still be plenty of water. When we move in I'll tweak it so we're just giving the lawn enough water so it stays healthy. My start time is set to 7AM.

[gone down south]

I've just recently learned that after about 5 minutes the soil near the surface gets completely waterlogged and any water put on it after that would just run off into the gutter, so watering in 5-minute intervals with 5 or 10 minutes between was better than one long soaking.

[kdog]

Originally Posted by gone down south

I've just recently learned that after about 5 minutes the soil near the surface gets completely waterlogged and any water put on it after that would just run off into the gutter, so watering in 5-minute intervals with 5 or 10 minutes between was better than one long soaking.

That's a great point. Why not spread the intervals out by a few hours though? I get some pooling too, and now I think I see the wisdom in using intervals.

[MediocreButArrogant]

Originally Posted by kdog

That's a great point. Why not spread the intervals out by a few hours though? I get some pooling too, and now I think I see the wisdom in using intervals.

FWIW, our water company in Las Vegas suggests three waterings of four minutes each, scheduled one hour apart. The thinking is that longer runs are simply wasted as the ground is saturated and the water just runs off or pools. But water penetrates deeper into soil that is already moist, so you don't want to schedule the runs too far apart. Well, there you wouldn't, because it is so hot, and the ground could dry out between runs, but it might be ok here.


Cycle and Soak Irrigation

[DMenscha]

Have your lawn aerated and cut the water use in half.