SALT LAKE CITY — It’s that time of year again — the spring rains have done about what they can do and it's time to start watering your lawn. Now we all have the annual set of choices to make: let our yard go brown and deal with angry neighbors, xeriscape or work our landscaping. Done right, our yards can be a source of pride and peace.

Different lawn options

If you choose the first option of forgetting about your lawn and letting it die and turn brown — good luck to you. But the grief often associated with city fines and rumors of foreclosure may be more than you want to manage. This is not the least effort option, and you probably don’t need that kind of heartburn.

If you choose to xeriscape, landscaping and gardening that reduces or eliminates the need for supplemental watering, hats off to you. Just make sure those cactus plants don’t end up impaling the neighbor kids.

The other option is to utilize sprinkler systems, lawn mowers, and weed and feed your lawn. This one seems to be the most popular, and there are a lot of good reasons why. But if you do it wrong or if you don’t know what to do, there can be some pretty nasty consequences.

If you’re into keeping your lawn growing and your basement not growing things, there is a major rule to follow: Make sure the water goes where it should. It’s a good rule.

Make sure the water is only going on your grass

Sometimes the most obvious statements contain the greatest wisdom: water should go on your lawn. Have you ever walked your dog, cat or iguana past a home where they use a full circle sprinkler head in the park strip? This gives you the choice of diverting your walk to the middle of the street or being the subject of someone’s lawn watering experiment. It is very wasteful to have sprinklers that spray the sidewalk.

How about soaking the house? Home inspectors routinely see sprinklers spraying the home. It’s hard on your stucco, rock or whatever siding you have. It causes wet walls, and wet walls cause rot, mold and termites. It can also cause structural damage, spiders and other creepy crawlies making an abode of your castle. Keep water away from your house. Move your sprinkler heads away from the foundation and ensure that water only sprays away from the structure.

Watering at night has its issues

Have you ever heard that it’s best to water your lawn at night? You can lose a lot of water if there is a lot of heat or wind, and there is less evaporation when things are cooler. But there is a warning for watering at night: if you are a set-it-and-forget-it homeowner, there can be massive waste with night watering.

Have you ever hit a sprinkler head with a lawn mower? Ever had a child kick a head or twist it off? Neighborhood lab puppies are notorious for thinking sprinkler heads are toys. Damaged or broken heads can become geysers when they are broken, causing water waste to rocket to 80 percent — and you won't even realize there are issues if you are sleeping while the watering is taking place.

Go ahead and run your system at night, but inspect the system at least once a month. Some like to run their system early in the morning so they can see it operate as they get up and have breakfast. There are other options as well, based on what works best for you.

Watering by hand often wastes time, water

Watering your lawn by hand isn't recommended because it is easy to forget to turn them off or rotate them across your yard. Sprinkler heads placed on a patch of lawn at 5:30 p.m. are often remembered at 10 p.m. that night — or at 8 a.m. the next day. Manual watering is often a huge waste of time and water.

Watering every day isn’t recommended

Home inspectors will tell you that many homeowners run their sprinkler system for too long, too often. If you water your yard for an hour per zone every day, let’s be blunt: you’re the problem. Roots go where the water is, so if the surface gets watered for a short period of time every day, the roots will be at the surface, and that area will get baked and look horrible in July and August.

Surface water is also often lost to evaporation and can be considered wasted. It is much better to water deeper two to three times a week. Depending on the size of your yard and the sprinkler placement, 40 minutes may be just the right length. Between watering, let the surface dry out, making those roots grow deep.

Don’t spray the house or window wells

Seasoned home inspectors have codes for sprinklers that are trying desperately to cause mayhem. For example, the code DSH turns automatically to “don’t spray the house” and DSW is “don’t spray over or into the window wells.” It happens on just about every home and typically causes issues and water waste.

If you want a swimming pool in your basement, feel free to put one in. On the other hand, if you have a family room or bedrooms down there, the last thing you need is to turn these places into mini swimming pools from sprinkler water leakage. Mold remediation is expensive and that combined with water damage can result in jacked-up insurance rates.

By monitoring where the water from your sprinklers is going, it will help prevent high water bills, rot, mold, termites and structural problems. Keep your home dry and your lawn green. With your sprinkler system on your homeowner radar, you can keep your money in your wallet and your family out of the hospital.

Garth is a home inspector, podcaster, broadcaster and long-time contributor for KSL.com. To master your mansion, visit www.masteryourmansion.com and www.therealestateedge.com. Listen for Garth soon at BYU Radio, Sirius channel 143.

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