Our old house didn’t have a sprinkler system, so I really didn’t know anything about setting the zones, or setting the watering days, or setting the watering times. Basically, I knew nothing.
Our controller is a Toro, (a brand I’ve heard nothing good about, but that’s for another story) so I read the book and figured it out. However, I had no way of knowing how long to set each zone to “sprinkle”. In my old yard, I would set the sprinkler in the yard with the hose and leave it on for about 30 minutes, but for some reason this seemed too long for each zone to be on. So I decided to cut that in half and set it to water for 15 minutes per zone, seven days a week.
Then I got the first water bill…$569.27!
What I failed to take into consideration was the fact that my yard has eight zones. 8x15=120. That means I was watering my yard for two hours each day. Something had to be done.
Thanks to the rather rainy summer we’ve been having here, and the early settlers in Dallas we rarely ever have any real watering restrictions. Back in the 1800’s, evidently, the Dallas city or county leaders had the forethought to buy or trade for all the water in the surrounding lakes that is below 30 feet. (This number could be wrong, but you get the idea) This means that in the summer when the lakes levels drop and all the surrounding cities are limiting the watering days and times, because they have to buy most of their water from Dallas, Dallas city residents are leaving the faucets on while they brush their teeth, they are watering whenever they want to and basically just pouring water down the drain.
But I digress…
My mother-in-law, who lives in one of those surrounding cities, told me that she is allowed to water on three days a week and she does so for 10 minutes per day. Her grass is always green and her yard looks nice so I decided to alter my watering plan.
I was watering 15 minutes per day and seven days a week for a total of 840 minutes per week. Now I’m watering four zones for 10 minutes and four zones for five minutes, but only three days a week for a total of 160 minutes. That’s a difference of 660 minutes a week, or 2,640 minutes per month.
Yesterday, I got my new water bill and it was 400 dollars lower!
That’s when I realized watering less really does pay…
And my yard still looks good!
4 comments:
OK. I get the idea that your bill is lower - but do you HAVE to blatently show off your math skills like that?! strained my medula just reading your blog. What's with ALL THOSE EQUATIONS! You reminded me of a word problem I had back in the 10th grade.
I'm glad school is starting back soon so you can have an "avenue" for your skills!
The amount of math in my post never occurred to me. However, now that you mention it, I should have multiplied the sum of my “before altering” minutes by Dallas City Water’s rate per minute to arrive at my afore mentioned bill amount. Then I could have posed the following question:
If “X” is the percent difference of watering minutes and “Y” is the product of the per minute rate times X, and the sum of watering minutes per month is reduced by X, but the fee rate remains constant, what is the new value of Y?
Yes! I should have done that…except I really didn’t want to be a geek.
Check the ole calendar. It's become fairly obvious our favorite online author has returned to the workforce; no more leisurely mowing lawns (then a cooling dip in da' pool), trips to Cabo or evidently blog posts.
Been seeing "Watering Less..." for quite some time now and began to gripe and/or wonder until I realized, "Huh. School has obviously started back."
Or you could do like me, have a sprinker system and just not use it. Let the grass die. Feel stupid about it.
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