Irrigation Managers · ET & rainfall lookup
A playful month-by-month look at what happens when a fixed timer applies the same budget every month, compared to ET- and rain-aware runtimes (more when plants are thirsty, less when rain or cool weather carries you). HOAs, campuses, parks, and sports fields all see the same pattern: weather does not arrive in twelve equal slices.
Smart targets real need; the rest is often lost to runoff, uniformity, and watering the calendar. Default 0.78 is illustrative (see IFAS on typical system application efficiency).
Outdoor irrigation benchmarks vary widely by climate, plant mix, and metering. Denver Water cites about 12 gal/ft²/year as an efficient mixed-use landscape goal. UF/IFAS-related residential benchmarking has reported much higher observed applied water in some Florida studies (on the order of 38 gal/ft²/year annualized — see Romero & Dukes, CFWC research synthesis PDF via UF). Federal FEMP guidance publishes city-by-city annual irrigation factors for turf and other landscape types. The presets are starting points only — use your bill, meter, or audit and edit the field above.