If the natural precipitation in the area isn't enough to sustain your yard, maybe you should think about landscaping with more appropriate materials. That's all I'm saying.

It's stupid in the desert (e.g. Phoenix), but where I live we average the required 1" per week. The problem is that we get 2" in 3 or 4 days then nothing for 1.5 weeks.

It's not called the bayou (aka swamp) city for nothing so there is plenty of water and watering is not a waste.

In our area, we have two water feed lines coming in from the city.

One is for all inside-the-house uses. This is metered and we are charged in 1,000 gallon increments.

The other feed, designated "Project Apricot," is recovered, sanitized (to some degree), sewer (waste) water. This is a flat rate monthly charge. It is designated "non-potable" and intended for outside uses such as watering lawn, car washing, etc. If it is connected to an automatic sprinkler system it may be used two days / week. The designated days depend on whether the house address is even or odd numbered. If used via a hand-held hose, such as when washing a car, or watering lawn, plants, garden, etc., there are no restrictions.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
It's stupid in the desert (e.g. Phoenix),

Then we are stupid, and on a well. But we wanted a small area of grass for our dogs to lounge, so I installed a single impact sprinkler, turned it on to see how big of a circle it covered, (40ft), then made a circular plot of grass around it (36ft), which makes it about 1,000 sq ft of grass. The remainder of our six acres is either native creosote or mesquite, with landscape rock near the house. Our 1 acre dog compound has the grass plot, also a couple thousand sq. ft. of clean sand a couple of inches thick, and the rest denuded of all vegetation using pre-emergent weed killer applied twice/year. This keeps the nasties (and the desert has plenty of them), like foxtails and burrs away from the dogs. Keeping it clear of all vegetation also keeps the snakes at bay, because their primary food source likes to burrow under the bushes and trees. Just last night, my wife killed a baby Mohave rattlesnake outside her door, but that is perhaps the 7th rattler in 15 years of living here that we have seen anywhere near the house.
 

We have sprinklers for our lawn. When it rains, the lawn gets sprinkled.

I don't water my "lawn." It's a bunch of bright green crabgrass, at least until next year when I'll start from scratch. That being said, who doesn't like a lush, green, well manicured lawn?

There's a little side note about your observation about wasting water on lawns.

Many of you on the forum are familiar with saltwater flounder gigging, which is going out at night in a boat with underwater lights and using a gig to harvest mature Atlantic Flounder.

One of the special moments in doing this is that you are out on the water where it is generally peaceful (short of the mosquitoes and sand gnats buzzing around your head). With these underwater lights in 3-4 feet of water you can see quite clearly in a circular area some 10-20 feet around the bow of the boat (depending on water clarity). It's very beautiful as you encounter all types of salt water creatures, from large to small crabs, shrimp, hermit crabs, eels, minnows, you name it. The bottom is teeming with life that you can admire.

So one night I am flounder gigging along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). I have a few people along who have never been out on the water like this and they are ooohing and aaahing as we see different sea creatures along the bottom.

Suddenly, as we move along the bank, there are no more fish, no more shrimp, no more crabs, nothing. The bottom has a dead gray color and there is not one living thing within the radius of the light as we move along the shoreline.

After about 50' of this, I get really curious and grab my spotlight and shine it up on the shoreline.

Wanna guess what I see? We are skirting along a huge golf course, and there are drains occasionally poking through a very well-built seawall edge. The sprinklers are running and the grass is soaking in water. Where these dripping drains poke out you can clearly see a discolored gray pallor on the bottom. Areas of algae bloom in these spots.

So what we were seeing was the "water" from the golf courses percolating down and running off into the estuaries which lead to and from the ocean water. In this "water" you could potentially have large levels of phosphorous, potassium, sulfur, urea, formaldehyde, and whatever pesticides are in use. This happens all along the coast and even inland on lakes.

I'm not the biggest tree-hugger, but damn...

Most years my lawn goes brown and dormant in July and August, and that's fine with me.
I don't water it, and I don't have to mow it for those two months.

This year there has been enough rain to keep it green and growing.

A weed that we spend a lot of money and time on to get it to grow, then spend a lot of time and money to cut it back down.

Our water rates went up 100% in a 7 year period, and it keeps going up. I've decreased my water use on the lawn as a result, really trying to game the rain. I will kill the grass and gravel the yard when I have the money to do so. Rocks cost money however. I'll need about 7k to convert the property to mostly gravel and some river rock. Some neighbors did it and spent close to 10k. It pays for itself but recoup time is 5+ years. I'm really tired of mowing in the 100 degree heat and cannot wait to rock it out, sell the yard equipment, and be done with grass, watering and mowing it, for life. To me unless you have a need for grass it's a huge waste of time, money, and natural resources.

4 years ago we had to tear up our backyard lawn so trucks could move in supplies for repairing a wall. Never liked mowing and have no intent on putting a lawn back in. Saves on water, no chemicals to leach into the soil, and no introduction of non-native plant species into the ecosystem. Dogs don't seem to mind and the backyard meshes with the chaparral surrounding us.

We have mix of tall fescue & Bermuda grasses. Cutting height is 3" 's. If we don't get rain, I let it go dormant.

quote:

Originally posted by Monk:
If the natural precipitation in the area isn't enough to sustain your yard, maybe you should think about landscaping with more appropriate materials. That's all I'm saying.

Maybe the person just had a tree removed, stump ground, has filled in the hole with soil and has planted seed...

Are you my neighbor? If so, I am going to hook the hose to your outdoor tap :-)

Had a small lawn when I lived in Utah. It was so small that I could spit across it.
I unhooked the sprinkler system, let it die and then did rocks.
I have 4.6 acres now and loathe cutting the yard. It rains here quite a bit so I know it'll never die. I can wish tho.

some places require new houses to be built with at least a front yard lawn.

quote:

Originally posted by Monk:
If the natural precipitation in the area isn't enough to sustain your yard, maybe you should think about landscaping with more appropriate materials. That's all I'm saying.

Your Bay Area"ness" is showing through. (Unless I recall incorrectly).

I woukd counter with car washes being the biggest waste. I don't see the point.

But back on topic, I live in the Central Valley wherevwater is scarce (well, not this year) and summers are hot, dry and long. I think we average about 12" a year, and pretty much none of that from April to October. My front yard stays acceptably green on 20 minutes a week. Backyard is all gravel.

Assuming water and pumping electricity are fairly priced, whatever someone wants to do with their water is fine by me.

People do realize it's not destroyed by being used, I hope - we all got taught (or used to) about the water cycle thing.

Evaporates? Well, it enters the atmosphere and comes down later, somewhere else.

Goes into the ground? That recharges ground water.

Flows away? That either recharges ground water somewhere else, or flows into rivers/the ocean.

You didn't 'waste' it, you temporarily used it. Got some electrical pumps to move it around, used it, maybe put it through a water treatment system, and then it's back in the water system, underground, downstream, or in the air.

And if nobody else is subsidizing that - if you are paying a market price - it's none of their business.

Now, when Big Brother says who gets how much, and sets the price arbitrarily (generally, lower than market) then it's time for everyone to overconsume, and create shortages, and then to stick their noses in to try to reduce other people's overconsumption. And not by letting the price go up to cover costs, but by empowering Big Brother to stop them, while keeping your own price nice and low so you, yourself, can still overconsume.

So, the mess the government started with their meddling in the first place winds up gaining them more power over everyday lives.

I quit watering once I realized it wasn't helping and I was not willing to buy enough water to change that. I have fescue. I wish it was bermuda. I've seeded some bare spots with bermuda. Maybe someday the bermuda will take over.

Arizona has around 300 public golf courses. Imagine all that water...

quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
Arizona has around 300 public golf courses. Imagine all that water...

They are funny looking courses, though, when you first see them. The greens and fairways are irrigated, but the "rough" is pure desert on many of them. So looking down on them, the only green you see are the narrow fairways and greens and tees, and then it goes right to brown.
 
I believe many of them use treated sewer plant water ("clean", but not potable), and other forms of reclaimed water (gray water in some developments).