This means that in 1993 there were approximately 2,071,981 acres of home lawns being irrigated. A conservative estimate of the number of irrigation applications per year would be 15 one inch applications. With this large a volume of water being applied to irrigate turfgrass in the state, combined with our ever decreasing potable water supplies, it is vital that a major effort be under taken to educate home owners to the need for conservative water use in the landscape. There are many things that a home owner can do to reduce the amount of water they apply to their lawns. The first, would be to learn how to program their irrigation controller, if they have an in ground system.
Many people never adjust their irrigation controller once they have it set.
This means that they apply the same amount of water to the lawn throughout the growing season, no matter what the water requirements are. By simply adjusting the volume of water applied to the lawn, as seasonal needs change millions of gallons of water could be saved each year. The next conservation practice would be to know how much water is applied by a sprinkler system over a given period of time. As the turfgrass extension specialist I am frequently contacted by homeowners with questions about problems in their lawn. In the majority of the cases I find that most people over irrigate their lawn and landscape.