Hang on, 1/2" of water in 4 minutes? How did you measure that?

I placed 6 straight-sided containers that were 2-4" high at various places in the lawn and measured the amount of water captured in each can during each watering. Some places captured less, but 1/2" was predominant throughout. The backyard registered only 1/4" so my assumption would be that it needs to be watered twice as long. I'm afraid to make any changes without more input. Landscaper has disappeared and online resources don't address new sod. Most say 2" per week when lawn is established - more if hot and windy.

sharron - I don't think what you are saying in regards to your water rate is possible. You are either saying it wrong or are measuring it wrong. My system runs at about 8 gallons per minute and it takes roughly 2 hours to lay down 1 inch of water on each section of my yard. You said you get 1/2" in 4 minutes. That is 15 times more water than my system puts out, and puts you at 120 gpm! That's like a fire monitor. Can you explain again about your water rate?

You only need enough water to keep the soil under the sod moist, so if you are putting down 1.5" per day that is waaay too much water.

Also, where do you live? Do other people have KBG in your area? It seems an odd choice for a high desert area, but I don't claim to be an expert on KBG growing regions. If you area get into the 90's AND windy on a regular basis then I don't see how KBG stands a chance.

My method for measuring came from an online article so it is probably wrong. I hope it is wrong. I was about to drastically reduce my water cycles during the hottest and windiest season, which didn't make any sense. Thus this forum inquiry. I'm in Southern Utah - Cedar City - hottest summer they've had in years. I just moved here from CA. Yes, KBG is popular here, but I don't yet know local resources I can trust. How do you measure the gallons/hour? Can I do it myself? Can you tell me how long it would typically take KBG sod to establish if properly watered?

Not using Canadian time although I'm half Canadian :) If I cut time down to 15 seconds, how many times would you suggest I run per day. Now running at 4 a.m., 6 a.m. and again at 7 p.m. if wind during day above 15 mph and temp above 80. I see others watering KBG in evening, too, altho I thought that was a no no. Can't penetrate sod with houseplant water meter to check if it is wet underneath. Meter registers dry in most spots or barely moist, that's why I keep watering as often as I do even tho I know these meters aren't very reliable for lawns. Lawn is very small - both front and back - and both slope.

KBG in Utah & fescue in California? These sod farms must be making a tidy profit with everyone replacing their lawns annually!

@sharron: The easiest way to determine your flow rate is to record the water meter reading before turning on the sprinkler system. Run it for an exact time like, say 10 minutes as measured by a stop watch, and then turn it off. Make sure no other water is being used in the house. The difference in meter readings divided by 10 is your gpm. Your water meter may have a zero drawn on the dial as the last digit. You include that in your reading, so basically all readings end in a zero.

How many square feet is the lawn you are watering? If the KBG was laid down over two months ago, it should be pretty well established by now. You shouldn't be able to lift up the sod. In any case, it sounds like you are putting down far too much water, but if you live in a desert and it dries out immediately then maybe you do need that much???

A photo of the whole yard in question would be helpful, too.

@dchall: In these new high flow systems, do they require the homeowner to change out their water meter to a larger capacity one? If the lawn is anything other than a postage stamp in size, I don't know how you get anything close to say 120 gpm though a 3/4" pipe all the way from the street and then through a home water meter. Without doing a calculation I don't really know if it could be done, but it sounds off to me.

@daniel, at last a valid way to measure water usage. Grateful. Thanks also to @dchall. I know Cajon Pass well and Victorville. We are 3000 ft. higher elevation and have snow and rain 4 months of the year. Still desert in Zone 5, but elevation and precipitation may make KBG doable. Just need to figure out how to manage it this 1st summer. Both front and back yards are postage stamp - maybe 800 sf ea. Photos from installation day March 29 attached.

It's a beautiful area!

If you can't penetrate the soil with a sharp metal object, you're not getting any water. Is it running off? Something about this is not right. What does a current picture of the whole yard look like?

I'd like to see another water test using tuna or cat food cans instead of soup cans. Time how long it takes to FILL the cans and get back to us.

I'm going to suggest using shampoo on the soil, too. Spray at least 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet and follow that up with 1/2-inch or more to get it down deeper into the soil.

Your location is becoming more important as you move farther away from Victorville. Where are you? I promise we won't descend on your 4th of July party. Depending on your location I might be suggesting a Logan Labs soil test for you and I don't do that willy nilly.

Daniel I think they get high flow by putting sprinklers closer together. Think about it: just pouring water out of a hose will fill the can in a few seconds. Lots of sprinklers right near the cans will fill it fast, too. They have a lot of zones, but the flow rate is about the same as any sprinkler. Instead of a 8-head zone covering 800 square feet it might only cover 100 square feet with the same number of heads.

Thank you @dchall. Here are current photos. Cedar City. Will do tuna-can test tomorrow morning early and hold off on shampoo till we know how much water is being sprayed. Sprinkler heads about 8 ft apart front and back around perimeter plus 2 in center in backyard only. I'm starting to get a good picture of problem with forum questions that help thinking it out.

Front yard (left side) next to new home construction site.

Front right next to unsold home. Their half of this patch gets my water plus theirs. I see very little runoff although there is a slope. Only 2 sprinkler heads on both sides.

Back yard

Backyard rectangular trouble spots along patio.

@dchall: Yes, if the area is very small it would be able to dump large volumes quickly. I did a little calculation. I looked online and saw that a typical home will max out at around 10 gpm full capacity. That makes some sense because my system runs at 8 gpm and it looks like the meter is about to fly away like a helicopter. I have a lot of water pressure, so maybe I could get more than 10 gpm, but the meter would probably have to be resized.

At 10 gpm, in order to accumulate 1/2" of water in 4 minutes, you would have to limit the lawn irrigation to about 130 square feet of lawn. I'm not sure why anybody would want to design a system like this. It leaves no room for error. If you run 10 minutes by accident you have deluged your lawn.

It's because of easy + cheap design. I just did the same calcs as you dc & can up with the same results. If those sprinklers are using the standard VAN or U series nozzles and are hitting head to head with coverage, then each head is adding 0.0667 inches of water per minute. Two heads will easily get you 0.5" water in 4 minutes.

Those heads have a screw on the top that can reduce output. But that also reduces the distance they spray. So it may be a balancing act to correct the issue. The simple fix on the larger areas is to replace the nozzles with something like this. Smaller (strip) areas can use these. There are other options also. It just will take a fair amount of information gathering then trial & error.

I don't understand why easy and cheap = the equivalent of a 500 year flood event! It's like getting 7.5" of rain in an hour.

I don't understand why easy and cheap = the equivalent of a 500 year flood event!

Yea that's cause you are a lawn nut & home owner.

If you were a non-caring, general contractor/landscaper who had 1000 sprinklers that cost $1.00 each in bulk, you would just pop them in the ground and move on. Spending time to actually dial in the actual settings would cost you labor & parts. When things go wrong (and you know they will) you can get paid to come back to fix the job. If you, as the original installer, are not contacted to do the job, one of your buddies will be. Every house in my neighborhood has those sprinklers, they are set to water for very short periods of time, several times per day, EVERYDAY. Almost every single lawn (TTTF) has died and/or been replaced in the 9 years since my subdivision was built. It is very big business. Very few people get out of the loop.

The pic below is just another example. This is a ~4000 sq/ft yard with new irrigation installed, 1" at it's deepest areas underground!!! Those same sprinklers as the op are every 8 ft in this 100 x 40 ft yard. Instead of using the correct sprinklers & burying the pipes like they should, they did this job. Yep, also sodded TTTF. Almost every pipe in his yard can be seen through the dirt, just like mine was before my 2nd redo that I'm doing myself. Different company but same results. $10k worth of trash. They wanted to charge him to come out & repair a line he broke while mowing. He saw me working on my yard & asked for my input. He has been trapped in the cycle like the rest of us. After 6 months dealing with problem water bill, irrigation, & turf, he's now thinking about concreting over his yard like some of our other neighbors.

It's cheap & easy for them, but very expensive for us.

Wow hawk, amazing/tragic story. They're just piecing together bits of PVC instead of using proper tubing, to boot.

Getting back to the OP...concrete getting hot and staying hot all night helps to keep the soil
dry. Can you adjust the sprinklers adjacent to the hardscape to put out
more water? If not then you'll have to water on a more frequent schedule
as if you had temps in the 100s or so.

Cedar City, UT, right?

Yes, Utah. This a.m. I put out 10 tuna cans in the front yard. 2 were full at 11 minutes and nearly all were full in 18. So what does this tell you about how much water is going down per minute in terms of gallons / inches. If you missed them, scroll up to see photos taken yesterday. Temperatures are staying in 90s with wind every day in afternoon up to 15 mph. Some improvement noticed since adding 3rd watering at 7 p.m. BTW, cans on the west side of the driveway adjacent to unoccupied home had very little water in them at all, which tells me sprinkler heads need to be adjusted. Can't tell you how much I appreciate the time you gentlemen have given to this.

The big question to me is, is the soil able to absorb 1" of water that quickly or does it start to run off after 3-4 minutes. A shot of baby shampoo wouldn't hurt.

How deep are your tuna cans?

Tuna cans are 1" deep and 3 1/4 wide. There are now 2 suggestions to apply shampoo - one at the rate of 3 oz. per 1000 feet - diluted, I assume, with enough water to cover that sq. footage. Correct? There was considerable runoff during 20-minute test, but watering for shorter periods of time created very little runoff.

In the areas where you watered 15-20 minutes, are you able to stick a 4" screwdriver all the way into the ground now?

Yes - everywhere. Even in the bad spots near hardscape :)

sharron - if you have confirmed your gpm then the gallons/minute doesn't really matter. Out of curiosity, do you know the sq ft. of lawn where you filled the cans in about 18 minutes? My system gets to an inch in about an hour in one section, a bit longer in the other. That's only about 3x longer than yours and each of those zones is about 2000 sf. If you have something under 1000 sf then our flow rates aren't that different. I guess if it works without excess water runoff then "why not"?

The front yard is only about 500 sf and the back closer to 800.

Ok great. Sounds like on average 15 minutes will give you an inch of water. Also sounds like the water is penetrating the soil, though you are getting some runoff. The grass needs 1" per week during the hottest months, so you're over-applying water by 7 times. My suggestion would be to apply baby shampoo to help with runoff and reduce watering to 10 minutes every 3 days for the next couple weeks, then 10 minutes every 4 days, then move towards 15 minutes a week all at once.

Sounds like a plan. What ratio of shampoo to water do you recommend I spray? 1 oz shampoo to how much water? I have learned so much from all of you and am convinced the biggest problem was lack of saturation.

Generally you want 3 or 4 oz shampoo per 1000 sf. It is usually applied in a hose end sprayer if you have one, or you could use a gallon pump sprayer just as easily, and probably more precisely, since the area is small. The amount of water to go with the shampoo isn't important. You just want to dilute it so you can get approximately even coverage. I did this and repeated for three consecutive weeks at 4 oz each application, so it won't hurt if you don't get it exactly right. You should water it in but since you are watering so frequently you can just wait until your next "artifical tropical storm" aka your irrigation system. :o)

+1

OK. Got it. I think I can take it from here. One of the smartest things I've ever done was to contact this forum. Loved the comments and the humor shared among you but most of all the knowledge and expertise. Kudos and thanks!

I am not disagreeing with any suggestions, I'm just stating some concerns. Since this is a new development & new sod there are many unknowns. I see a lot of sand and rocks all around the property. I have concerns that this may also be the foundation material under the lawn. If this is the case wouldn't water just flow through this stuff? Wouldn't this explain why there is little runoff with this volume of water output and improved lawn after adding even more water and reduced temps?

What you suggest is probable since I felt gravel when penetrating with a screwdriver today, especially closer to the street. But most areas are responding better now and keeping this grass alive and in reasonably good shape is likely the best I can hope for this year. Will watch it like a "hawk" - no pun intended - and adjust more as I go along and become more acquainted with locals in the field. Thanks for your comment!

Hi guys - Thought you might like to see the results after following your suggestions. Who says you can't grow Kentucky Bluegrass in Southern Utah at 6,000 ft. elevation? It's thick, it's plush, it's beautiful. I'm watering now every 3rd day through this heat (95+) and wind (15-25 mph) but staggering the watering at 3:30 4:30 5:30 a.m. to drop a total of 1". I'm sure I can cut that down to once a week this fall and in subsequent years. The areas that are still challenging area along the hardscape and have rock or some hard construction substance under them, but even those areas look 100% improved. I've used shampoo 1/week for 4 weeks at 3 oz. per 1,000. Thank you again for getting me over the hump. Woo hoo.