How often should a lawn be watered?

I'm getting very annoyed with my new next-door neighbors who insist on watering their lawn EVERY SINGLE DAY even though our weather's not even hot yet. First of all I find all that wasting of water extremely offensive and irresponsible, plus in the front yard the runoff is going in part of my CA natives bed and is going to kill them at some point, and in the back yard it's running off into a part of the yard that I haven't landscaped yet and is now covered in giant weeds (not to mention that now I can't really plant anything there because it would drown from all the water). I'd love to have a nice friendly chat with them about appropriate watering, but since the last time I took care of a lawn was in a very different climate (Ohio) I don't really now how often a lawn ought to be watered out here.

If your city water department is like mine ( Marin Munipl. Water Dept. ) they will have a TON of information specifically written for your exact location based on their ET weather stations. (evaoporative transpiration )

If Dublin's water dept. has ET capabilities you will be armed and dangerous with enough information to make your neighbors head spin.

The amount of responsible water that one applies to their lawn is dependent of a variety of factors such as weather ( rain, sun and wind ) as well as the variety ( blue grass vs. fescue ) and the age of the lawn ( well areated and thatched vs. heavy build up of thatch and soil compaction ) and the type of soil profile that the lawn is surviving upon ( clay, sand, compacted ect.. )

Newly installed lawns require a lot of moisture for the roots to reach down and become established into the newly prepared soil. We often set the timer to go off 2 times a day for 7 to 10 minutes for the first 10 days then reset the timer to one time a day for the follow week and then to its regular time of every 3rd day for about 7 minutes ( depending on sun and wind and type of grass + or - ) .

Too much water and you're in for a disaster of viral and pest infestations.

Click onto your water dept. to see if they have a ET info system set up.
If not click on over to the Marin Water District and check out their info. It is impressive.

Thanks! I will see if the Dublin-San Ramon water people have info that I can share with them. It's not a new lawn, I wish I could remember how often my previous neighbor over there watered it because it stayed nice and lush and green but I know she didn't water it every day, I think every third day or maybe every other day during the hot weather. These guys definitely need an education--over the winter when we went for long periods with no rain at all their grass was starting to look a little brownish, then I guess they must have figured out how to turn the sprinklers on because ever since then they've been watering every day. Don't know how long the sprinklers are on because they come on first thing in the morning before I'm out and about, but judging by the amount of runoff on their driveway and in my yard I'm guessing they run them for at least 15 min or so. And they have a garden bed on a slope that's not mulched, and it also gets watered every single day and I can see where dirt has started to slide down the hill and over the retaining wall onto their sidewalk at the base of the hill. You would think they would have seen this (not to mention their water bill) and figured they might want to cut back a bit on the watering. But so far they haven't. I also wish they were friendly/neighborly sort of people, then I would have talked to them about this already, but I rarely see them and the one time I waved to them they just ignored me. So since they don't seem like overly nice people I want to make sure I have accurate information before I talk to them about this!

If no one has an informed answer here, I'd contact your local water utility. They are *sure* to have addressed this issue. Of course, how often a given lawn needs water depends on what grass is being grown. I wish we could wean folks off lawns. At least the kind that need tons of water. When I moved here, nearly the entire back yard was lawn. I made a lawn area a much smaller part of an edible garden. (I would have gotten rid of the lawn, but I like to entertain and want to have an "audience" area.) I've put Pacific Sod's No-Mow blend in the smaller lawn area and it's gorgeous. Probably wouldn't do well is SoCal, but it's perfect in the wetter parts of the Bay Area.

edit: Whoops! I started my response, took a bath and a phone call and deviant_deziner posted that very informative post in the meantime.

This message was edited Apr 7, 2007 12:42 PM

I would love for them to get rid of their lawn, I don't have one and neither do my neighbors on the other side and personally I think our yards look much nicer for it! But I'll settle for watering appropriately for now. I'm not sure what sort of grass they had, but it made it through last summer's heat wave on a lot less water than it's getting now so I know they could cut back to a level where at least it's not running off onto my property all the time.