Day Eleven - The Grass is Always Greener

Turning off the Sprinklers

Yup, I'm a suburbanite through and through. I have an irrigation in my lawn and I turn it on faithfully every spring, in hopes of having the most enviable, lush green lawn on the block. I never succeed because I have weeds and I get lazy about mowing, but I keep the sprinklers on because they do at least keep it all looking green. Well not anymore my friends.

The system I have is attached to a scheduling computer which can be programmed to turn on and off on any day(s) of the week, for as long as I want. Normallly, I have it set up to water every other day for 20 minutes each morning. According to my most recent water bill, it would appear that that watering accounts for approximately 7 CCF per month. That's nearly double my normal use in non-watering seasons.

I have turned off the automatic watering system. Instead of letting it run every other day (regardless of whether or not we get rain), I'm only going to turn it on when the lawn starts turning brown. And even then, I'll get the most bang for my buck by turning it on when the kids can play in it.

You're right, if I were TRULY environmental, I'd shut it off, regardless of how barren my yard looks. But as I stated from the get-go, I'm going to make small changes that I think ANY American would feel just fine doing. So join me in lowering the standards for lawn care in Suburbia, USA!

SAVINGS:

I figure I'll only need to use 2 CCF per month to keep the tumbleweeds at bay. That means a monthly savings of 5 CCF! Considering I activate the sprinklers in March and deactivate in September, in one year, I'd save 45 CCF! That's 4,500 Cubic Feet of Water (not to mention about $100 :-)

DIFFICULTY LEVEL 1 out of 5

Easy enough to turn the control panel to "off". Now I'll just need to keep any eye on the dryness. The bonus to all this is that it should result in my having to mow less too!