Water frequency

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KBGkicksazz
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Water frequency

Post by KBGkicksazz » July 9th, 2019, 8:50 pm

Curious for guys in the Northeast, we are in the high 80s and touching 90F and last couple weeks been mostly dry with only one light rain (maybe 0.1”)

I notice by the fourth day the lawn starts getting dull and clearly lacks water so I then run the irrigation.

What are you guys running for days between irrigation to not have the yard start showing signs of drought stress?

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PSU4ME
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Re: Water frequency

Post by PSU4ME » July 9th, 2019, 9:01 pm

Right now I’m .5” every 3-4 days depending on mother nature’s rain schedule. With that said, I don’t alter my schedule until I see a solid amount of rain in the forecast

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Green » July 10th, 2019, 2:04 am

PSU4ME wrote:
July 9th, 2019, 9:01 pm
Right now I’m .5” every 3-4 days depending on mother nature’s rain schedule.
Similar here. For full sun, South and West facing areas, I've generally been putting down 0.5-0.75 inch of water 2-3x per week lately in the absence of rain. That is about as deep and infrequent as I can get in this heat without inducing too much in the way of dead blades.Temps have mostly been 88-90 for daily highs. My evapotranspiration data indicates approx. 0.25 inch of water is being used per day on average.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by KBGkicksazz » July 10th, 2019, 5:33 am

That’s about what I’m doing as well. My front and side yards get almost no break from the sun. Looking ahead by the end of next week we are going to be in the 90s for a several day stretch so I’ll get to see just how well my grass can handle the heat of summer.
PSU4ME wrote:
July 9th, 2019, 9:01 pm
Right now I’m .5” every 3-4 days depending on mother nature’s rain schedule. With that said, I don’t alter my schedule until I see a solid amount of rain in the forecast

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Paul » July 10th, 2019, 7:52 am

I water once a week and only watered twice this season. One of the reasons I chose Bewitched is that it ranked high for drought tolerance. I still mow twice a week, but maybe I could get away with once a week now. I helped by brother renovate his lawn two years ago to a Bewitched monostand and he hasn't watered yet this year and his lawn looks excellent. I would rather let the lawn stress a little than provide an environment for grassy weeds due to over watering. My lawn has absolutely no drought stress at all.


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Re: Water frequency

Post by northeastlawn » July 10th, 2019, 9:06 am

I have been impressed at how long my lawn was staying green and was going to stretch it out a few more days past the once a week I was planning on, but rust started popping up, so I decided to do a deep watering to help the lawn outgrow the rust. I figured the rust could be a sign of drought.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by KBGkicksazz » July 10th, 2019, 3:25 pm

Up until 2 weeks ago I was in the same boat.

It also makes a difference this time of year and the high sun of you lawn gets any shading from a tree line of house.

My lawn faces Southwest and my shrubs and trees aren’t big enough to give the lawn any breaks from the sun.
Paul wrote:
July 10th, 2019, 7:52 am
I water once a week and only watered twice this season. One of the reasons I chose Bewitched is that it ranked high for drought tolerance. I still mow twice a week, but maybe I could get away with once a week now. I helped by brother renovate his lawn two years ago to a Bewitched monostand and he hasn't watered yet this year and his lawn looks excellent. I would rather let the lawn stress a little than provide an environment for grassy weeds due to over watering. My lawn has absolutely no drought stress at all.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Dargin » July 10th, 2019, 4:50 pm

Aside from a couple spots that require extra work, I've been doing ~.5 inch every 4 days. It seems to be stable. Probably every 3 days as temps bump up next week.

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Water frequency

Post by ken-n-nancy » July 12th, 2019, 10:02 am

Dargin wrote:
July 10th, 2019, 4:50 pm
Aside from a couple spots that require extra work, I've been doing ~.5 inch every 4 days. It seems to be stable. Probably every 3 days as temps bump up next week.
+1. I do the above as well, on my sandy loam, partial- to mostly-shade lawn. Our standard irrigation cycle delivers about 0.5" of water to the entire lawn and takes about 8.5 hours to do so. I have the sprinkler system set up to water every 4 days. Whenever we get a rainfall of .5" or more, I reset the sprinkler controller to as if it just watered, so that the irrigation controller won't water until the 4th day afterwards. If we're in a stretch of multiple days of 85F+ temps, I temporarily change the controller to water every 3rd day instead. This seems to work pretty well.

I should also mention that I also look at the lawn just about every day and adjust as needed if I see trouble areas. A few sections along the driveway that get more sun will also sometimes get hand-watered in particularly hot dry spells.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Dargin » July 12th, 2019, 7:03 pm

Yeah, I should have mentioned my lawn is pretty sandy with some decent OM. Between surrounding three deckers and maples I get a maximum of 5-6 hours direct sun on any area.

Not crazy about having to bump up to a 1/2" every 3 days as heat rises. I'd hate to invite more fungal issues, but i guess it is what it is. I at least make sure it gets done very early morning. If we hit high 90's/100's I'm not exactly sure what my plan is.
ken-n-nancy wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 10:02 am

Our standard irrigation cycle delivers about 0.5" of water to the entire lawn and takes about 8.5 hours to do so.
Just curious. Does it take 8.5hrs because each zone is run one at a time? And what time of day do you start running that cycle?

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Re: Water frequency

Post by ken-n-nancy » July 12th, 2019, 7:44 pm

Dargin wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 7:03 pm
ken-n-nancy wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 10:02 am
Our standard irrigation cycle delivers about 0.5" of water to the entire lawn and takes about 8.5 hours to do so.
Just curious. Does it take 8.5hrs because each zone is run one at a time? And what time of day do you start running that cycle?
Yes, it takes that long because each zone is run one at a time, and it takes that long to deliver that much water to a lawn of our size (12,500 sqft).

We start our watering at 12:15am and it finishes at 8:45am. Actually, for us, that 8.5 hours of watering is 3.75 hours of watering to the entire lawn, a 1.0 hour break to give the well a chance to recharge a bit, and then 3.75 hours more watering, for an elapsed time of 8.5 hours, but with the lawn actually only being watered for 7.5 hours of that 8.5 hour duration.

In general, unless a homeowner has done measurements of their irrigation system, they probably aren't delivering as much water as they think when watering their lawn - it takes far longer to provide 1 inch of watering than most folks realize.

It takes 623 gallons of water to provide 1 inch to 1000 square feet. Our lawn is about 12,500 square feet, so it takes 7788 gallons (623 * 12.5) to provide 1 inch of watering.

Our well delivers approximately 6 gallons per minute to our irrigation system. To deliver 7788 gallons takes 1298 minutes = 21.6 hours. So, actually, this math reveals to me that for our irrigation system, 8.5 hours (7.5 hours of actual watering) is really only delivering about 0.35 inches of water to the entire lawn (not 0.5 inches as I mentioned previously). That's about all we have time for in one night, though.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by KBGkicksazz » July 12th, 2019, 9:05 pm

I have 8 zones and do 2 per day due to being on the well.

My drip irrigation also runs once per week which I do at 1-4 AM

The rain we get yesterday and the downpour we got tonight was well needed. If we can get 12- more of these over 10 days or so we’re well on oiur way to mid August.

ken-n-nancy wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 7:44 pm
Dargin wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 7:03 pm
ken-n-nancy wrote:
July 12th, 2019, 10:02 am
Our standard irrigation cycle delivers about 0.5" of water to the entire lawn and takes about 8.5 hours to do so.
Just curious. Does it take 8.5hrs because each zone is run one at a time? And what time of day do you start running that cycle?
Yes, it takes that long because each zone is run one at a time, and it takes that long to deliver that much water to a lawn of our size (12,500 sqft).

We start our watering at 12:15am and it finishes at 8:45am. Actually, for us, that 8.5 hours of watering is 3.75 hours of watering to the entire lawn, a 1.0 hour break to give the well a chance to recharge a bit, and then 3.75 hours more watering, for an elapsed time of 8.5 hours, but with the lawn actually only being watered for 7.5 hours of that 8.5 hour duration.

In general, unless a homeowner has done measurements of their irrigation system, they probably aren't delivering as much water as they think when watering their lawn - it takes far longer to provide 1 inch of watering than most folks realize.

It takes 623 gallons of water to provide 1 inch to 1000 square feet. Our lawn is about 12,500 square feet, so it takes 7788 gallons (623 * 12.5) to provide 1 inch of watering.

Our well delivers approximately 6 gallons per minute to our irrigation system. To deliver 7788 gallons takes 1298 minutes = 21.6 hours. So, actually, this math reveals to me that for our irrigation system, 8.5 hours (7.5 hours of actual watering) is really only delivering about 0.35 inches of water to the entire lawn (not 0.5 inches as I mentioned previously). That's about all we have time for in one night, though.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 13th, 2019, 8:45 am

I'm still figuring out what works best for me.

Right now I'm an inch a week, then a half inch several days later.

1 in takes 25 hrs on my lawn so I water over 3 days.

Everything is green except where I have coverage issues or had standing water this spring.

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Dargin » July 13th, 2019, 12:47 pm

Thanks for sharing all that info and breaking it all down, Ken-n-Nancy. Extremely helpful.

My initial estimates were based of can tests, but unless I'm hose watering with robotic precision every time (been trying) I suppose that test isn't all that accurate for me.

I just did the 5 gallon bucket test with my hose on it's normal shower setting. It took 80 seconds to fill it which breaks down to 3.75 gallons per minute.

623 gallons = 1" /k

Should be about 2hrs and 40 mins for me to deliver 1" to 1k
Watering at a 1/2" would be 1hr 20 mins /k.
Or about 3hrs for my whole lawn; about 2.3k.

Usually takes me just shy of an hour per k of hose watering so I guess I'm actually closer to 3/8" every 4 days. Not quite as deep as infrequent. I'll start giving it that extra 20 minutes per k every 3-4 days to get closer to the mark and see how it plays out. Thanks again for sharing. :)

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Re: Water frequency

Post by Pway » July 15th, 2019, 6:53 pm

Thanks to all who shared info on this. I’ve read about the 1” per week for a long time but never actually did the tuna can test (10 demerits for me). I have 13 zones each with four heads. I think I am underestimating the time it takes to achieve 1”. I don’t have a well so this is expensive but it is what it is. I have been running programs that give each zone 50-60 minutes a week but based upon the posts I’m thinking this might be 1/3 an inch or so. I realize it depends on the irrigation system (I have rain head 5000) and water pressure, etc. but will have to actually test this. I know it varies, but on average (sure there is a large standard deviation) how long is it taking people to get 1” with rain head 5000. I forget my pipe diameter, maybe an inch? I realize I’m going to have to calculate based on my setup but am curious as to the ranges of time.

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