Irrigation Schedule FAQs

We have been fortunate to have great conversations with our residents surrounding our new irrigation schedules. One of the best parts of having our residents reach out to us, is getting to answer questions we did not anticipate. We would like to share some of the FAQs that have come out of our conversations:

I only water once a week, why is the city forcing me to water more?

We are not asking residents to water twice a week, the schedule indicates which days irrigation is allowed to take place for a particular address. Residents are free to irrigate up to twice a week on their assigned days, but there is no obligation to water on these days.

I have a smarts sensor for my irrigation system and because of that I should not have to follow the irrigation schedule.

We are working to spread out/ normalize usage peaks. During the winter (non-irrigation months) we typically see 20 million gallons a day demand from the system. During the summer months we exceed 40 million gallons at intermittent spike intervals. These spikes mean that we must pay for upsizing our adequate infrastructure which still has much usage life, to accommodate a few demand spikes. The cost of doing so gets passed on to our ratepayers. By abiding by the irrigation schedule, you are helping to ensure that the smart controller irrigation community does not cause a spike on a particular day.

I invested in an advanced irrigation sensor and now its useless to me.

Smart Sensors are designed to accommodate irrigation schedules. You can program your days into your system, and the system will skip any pre-programmed day that occurs at a time when the ground is saturated, then automatically pick back up at the next pre-programmed day.

This schedule does not work for my routine, you will need to give me an exemption.

There are few things more frustrating than settling into a good routine, only to have it shaken up for reasons beyond your control. This is why we have implemented a grace period, to allow for sufficient time to change and become accustomed to the new routine. Thank you for working with us to conserve!

Do you have any other questions that we can answer? Please reach out in the question section below, or email conservewater@cityofdenton.com.