Management Practices
Proper management of outdoor water use is the most effective way to
reduce water waste. Without it, no amount of investment will make an
irrigation system efficient. Proper management practices can stand on
their own as an efficiency measure by ensuring that plants are being
watered according to their needs, or, ideally, they can be used to enhance
the savings from other options. Efficient landscape management practices
include ET-based irrigation scheduling, regular system maintenance (such
as checking for leaks and fixing broken or misaligned sprinkler heads),
and proper horticultural practices (such as fertilization and soil aeration).
Successful management involves an understanding of the irrigation
system, an ability to recognize problems with the system, and an ability
to adapt landscape needs to various conditions. These practices are not
difficult, but because they are so dependent on individual behavior, they
are difficult to quantify or predict.
A few studies have quantified the effects of proper management on landscape
water use. The following are some of the results from these studies:
• Western Policy Research (1997) evaluated the combined effects of irrigation
scheduling, system maintenance, and proper horticultural practices
on 16 test sites. Within five years water use dropped by 20 percent
and excessive peak-season irrigation was eliminated.4
• In a 17-month experimental study, Pittenger et al. (1992) studied six of
the most common groundcover species in southern California to determine
the minimum amount of irrigation required to maintain the
species. The authors concluded that with proper irrigation (scheduling,
frequency, and run time) and soil maintenance (mowing and
mulching), these species could be consistently maintained with an
acceptable appearance when seasonal irrigation plus rainfall totaled 33
percent of ETo (0.33 ETo) or even less – a vast reduction over the
assumed plant “need.”