City of Los Angeles Water Restrictions

Effective June 1st, 2009 residents of the city of Los Angeles will have to change the way they use their automatic sprinklers or be subject to a fine. The biggest part of the new emergency water conservation regulations is that you can only use your sprinklers two days a week, Monday and Thursday. You may hand water on other days, but you can't use water in your yard at all between the hours of 9am and 4pm. You also may not water more than 15 minutes for rotor type heads or more than 10 minutes for other types of heads like pop-ups or other spray heads. There's an exception for drip that uses less than two gallons per hour. The list of sprinkler use restrictions is available here: http://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/cms/ladwp011971.pdf

There are some restrictions that seem to run counter to previous water-saving efforts led by the DWP before, like the programs that offer free "smart" controllers and nozzles designed to prevent runoff like the MP Rotator. The Weathermatic Smart Line controllers, which have been given away in incentive programs, use site information in conjunction with a weather station that takes daily readings to computer just how much water is needed for your lawn. It also stops the controller from running when it rains, and even skips cycles after it rains if necessary. These controllers that are designed to use water efficiently and know when to shut themselves off might actually violate the new regulations if it decides a station needs to run more than 15 minutes. You can tell the controller to water Mondays and Thursdays, but if it calculates it needs to water a section longer than the allowed times, you would be subject to a fine. Rotors and MP Rotator heads typically need to run about three times as long as a spray head to put out the same amount of water, yet they are only allowing 5 minutes more per day (10 minutes per week) for these types of heads. Hopefully there will be come re-clarification or tweaking of the rules to allow these heads, especially the ones being suggested because of their run-off reducing ability, to be used.

We can help you program your controller and try to come up with a game plan to both follow the rules and still get the proper amount of water to your yard.