Excellent story.

That tree behind the leak must have been really, really happy.

And the tree's going to be po'ed to the max.

If you have one of the rought iron things that's used to turn off water at a water main, if you know how, you can listen at the end of that to tell if water is running through the pipe it sits on. We learned that from the Sewage and Water Board crews in New Orleans who used it to search for water leaks (in a two hundred year old system in on the street where we lived).

We have a 1/4 turn ball valve on the irrigation line that you can see from the dining room to make sure nothing gets left on over night.

I know we have three leaky hose bibs I need man help in replacing. For now I have put hoses on them and then soaker lines. But they will have to get fixed asap.

OK, I must admit it - that is not a tree in the picture - it is a tree stump. There was a huge (at least 5 stories tall) eugenie tree there, but it was cut down in 2011. It completely obliterated the view of the front of our house from the street, and was shading out all of the front garden, including 10 old OGRs, so it went. Roses happy now. We kept the stump to put a very large pot (it is 2/1/2 ft in diameter and 18 inches high) on the stump, in which I planted trailing petunias - it looks great. So, don't
worry about the tree being happy or unhappy.

Jackie

Holy cow, Jackie. That one leak would be about 19 ccf per month (1 ccf = 748 gallons, the unit by which we are charged for water), which is more than half my water bill during the height of summer. In extremis (August, September), we use 35 ccf per month for this 1/3 acre with 90 roses, fruit trees and berries that are surrounded by landscaping that gets little or no summer irrigation. I consider 35 ccf on the extravagant end; can be reduced to 30 ccf with a bit less bloom and a little more PM and other blemishes on the roses, and I suppose I may be cranking it down lower than that this year.

I pulled all the existing PVC pipe irrigation system in place when we moved here 12 years ago because it was old and I thought it couldn't be trusted (not to mention it made no sense -- irrigating CA natives along with everything else -- not to mention that the previous owner's water bills were astounding) and replaced it with weeper hoses -- a bit more work, but at least I can see leaks and other problems.

I'm glad you found it -- what an expense!

Besides reducing the number of roses, my big push for getting ready for water rationing is to switch from spray irrigation to drip. Tom and I will be starting this project in a few days.

Cats, the ccf is very interesting. We have a bit over half an acre and try to use about half of that in the summer. If it is very hot we might go over. Pretty sure we under water about everything so it will be hard to cut back 20%, but I do have a few runs of soaker hoses, so those are the next to go with a drip system.

I made my own manifold system and run the old garden hoses to the like types of plants on the drip. I know I need to do more to move the stone fruit from the citrus because once the stone fruit are of a certain size, I should stop or reduce the watering for flavor.

Congratulations, Jackie! I hope they're going to consider what you've saved in fixing your leak as part of your "voluntary conservation". Kim

Kim - and today it has been raining real rain for 6 hours so far, so we have turned off the irrigation completely - they are going to think we are heroes!

Since we are still probably going to have mandatory rationing effective April 1, I have been harassing the water company to find out what they mean when they say "25% reduction". Reduction over what? This month last year? This 2 months (we only get billed every 2 months) last year? Last month? I finally pried a sort of answer out of them - the answer is that they have not figured out yet what basis they are going to use (which is totally believable!), but it will NOT include any usage in 2014, and will be "an average of prior years", whatever that means.

So, I am hoping that when they announce the mandatory rationing they will have an actual formula.

Jackie

They'll figure out what formula they want to use. When they do, guaranteed it will be skewed to be difficult to achieve and will definitely result in paying much more for much less. Reductions scare me as I have voluntarily reduced my useage of water, natural gas and electricity for the past several years. It's been as much of a budgetary consideration as anything "enviornmentally minded". Areas have been abandoned and left to remain bare (easy where there is virtually NO water) and plants which haven't proven their suitability and value are gone. Each bi-montly water bill shows steady percentages of useage reduction. It mimics what happened at work when we continually operated with increasing efficency only to be held to the same percentage of reductions all the others were when cut-backs were announced. The only thing "fair" was to force everyone to meet the same reduction percentages, no matter how lean you've been running. Scary. Kim

Yes - there were immediate complaints along these lines when they first announced that there would be rationing. So, they have now said that households which have used up to 4500 gallons a month in the past (which I think comes out to about 150 gallons per day) will not be subject to further reductions. That solves the apartment dwellers issue, but not those of us who have gardens.

Jackie

This is a good suggestion even for people not in a drought area. I had a leak underground too that had been costing me money I didn't have.