Basic Watering 101: When should I water?

When should you water your lawn?

Lets start with when you SHOULD NOT WATER your lawn.

Between the hours of 9am and 8pm you should only water your lawn if there is a special reason since you will only get a fraction of the water absorbed due to evaporation.

Don't be that person that is outside in the middle of the day watering their lawn. When I am driving through developments it boggles my mind when see someone outside watering their lawn, it seems like they just want everyone to see that they have an irrigation system. The best system is one you don't realize is there. You just notice how nice the turf is and never see the system run.

The best time to run your turf zones is predawn. Depending on the size of the system I usually prefer a start time between 5am-6am. The start time will actually be determined by the total time it will take the system to cycle through. If your system is large and your total run time is over 4hrs then you might consider dividing your system into two programs to achieve an adequate amount of water.

Flowerbed zones are a little bit different. I prefer to water the flowerbed zones 7-9am.

Why watering in the daytime is not ideal:

For an example, say your goal is 1" of water to be absorbed to a maximum depth of 4". If you water your lawn mid day and apply 1" of water you may only see .4-.6" of an inch absorbed to a max depth of 1.5" since you are losing the rest of the water to evaporation.

Besides the obvious reason of evaporation running your irrigation predawn ensures low winds and higher water pressure.