How har is it to set up your automatic sprinklers so they aren’t spraying the sidewalk (which incidently is for WALKING off to the SIDE of the road)? Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t kill me the least that I have to take a detour around the parked cars, into the street for about 10-20 yards. But it is still annoying and more importantly in-fucking-considerate!
Seriously, this annoys the hell out of me. I wish people could have some respect for natural resources.
Another thing: Homeowners, water your lawns in the evening. It keeps the water from being wasted through evaporation.
It’s not the homeowners that soak the sidewalks around here, it’s the office parks and shopping plazas with their mis-aimed underground-fed sprinkler heads… Yesterday I came out of Sobeys on the Queensway and had to detour around the soaked sidewalk, right onto the Queensway, which is an arterial road. Okay, it was midnight and there were maybe three cars in eyeshot, but still.
Now, can anyone explain the three households on Eaton Avenue who bricked in their front yards and then varnished them? :eek: Seriously, WTF? Two of them don’t even have the excuse that it’s for parking! There’s a low wall that makes driving a vehicle onto the yard impossible!
I take it you are not wheelchair-bound.
I’m confused, Gangster. How are they then to get water to the thin strip 4 or 5 feet wide between the sidewalk and the street? Or do we simply have different configurations? Here the sidewalk parallels the street and there’s grass planted inbetween. Is your set-up similar in nature?
My water simply runs off the sidewalk and onto the grass with nothing wasted. Now if homeowners are “watering the street” with runoff going straight into the gutter, then yeah, you’ve got a very valid point.
Sorry, most every reputable site says this is wrong. All you’re doing is encouraging disease. Instead, water early in the morning. It still has enough time to soak in deep with little loss due to evaporation and won’t encourage fungus, brown patch, etc. Plus, when you water early in the morning you’re not disturbing those pedestrians that would care to use the sidewalk.
As a homeowner who’s spent more time than I like trying to get my sprinklers to spray only on the grass and avoid the sidewalk/concrete/whatever, I’d love to hear of this miraculous new technology that allows me to direct the spray so that it only lands on the green (and brown) stuff.
As an evening waterer, I’d like to see these references for the fungus/brown patch problems, thanks. Though setting the sprinklers too early means the noise wakes up the rest of my household prematurely…
Here’s a fairly disparate group of sources all counseling basically the same thing, although I finally found one that bucks the trend with an exception for very hot weather. I’m going to stop after these but this subject litters the internet.
From Chemlawn
*Always try to water your lawn in the early morning. By early morning, I’m referring to around 5 a.m.! This is the BEST time for watering, bar none. Early morning watering is best due to: the lack of evaporation that takes place, low winds that can blow you lawn dry, high humidity and morning dew that adds to the moisture. Early morning watering helps to prevent lawn diseases that can be caused by watering at night because it gives your lawn time to dry by night fall. *
From Ohio State University
*The best time to water is early morning, so less water is lost by evaporation. The worst time to water is in the evening because the lawn stays wet all night, which encourages disease development. *
University of Illinois
Given a choice, water early in the day when lawns are normally wet from dew. Avoid midday due to evaporation, and at night due to potential increased chances of some diseases.
American-lawns
Advises the same but with a caveat that should be noted. Maybe this’ll apply to you?
Given a choice, water early in the day when lawns are normally wet from dew. Avoid midday due to evaporation, and at night due to potential increased chances of some diseases. The exception to this guide is when you are in extremely hot weather and nighttime temperatures don’t go below 68 degrees. Then it is better to water in the late afternoon or early evening, providing you don’t have watering-time restrictions. Late in the day reduces the amount of evaporation that takes place during the very hot day, allowing more water to reach the root zone.
I dunno, but as the offender, it’s up to you to figure it out.
This is truly an age of miracles. They make spriklers that do half and 1/4 circles. Amazing.
As suggested, check out all the amazing sprinkler gizmos that allow you to cover various geometric shapes and sizes. Or to be environmentally conscious, let your lawn go dormant during dry weather. It’ll come back amazingly well after anything but a severe, prolonged drought.
And avoid sprinklers that make those annoying whooshing sounds.
Oh, I know – I’m especially fond of the ones that do a 15’ x 4’ rectangular stripe, for instance. The problem is that my house is on top of a (small) hill, so while I enjoy the cool breezes it gets me, the wind also screws up whatever well-planned watering I do. Or shall I install drop cloths around my property and annoy my neighbors? 
Good luck selling that to my wife. 
I was thinking of starting this tread myself.
I don’t have a car so I walk or ride my bike pretty much everywhere I need to go. It’s a major annoyance when I have to dodge some jerk-off’s sprinkler that he placed a foot or two away from the side walk. Or that on a nice sunny day I’m walking and all of a sudden I’m in a puddle and my shoes are soaked.
One house about a block away is the worst for this. The house is on the corner and some how the owner manages to get the sidewalk on both sides completly soaked. But I do have some solutions that are fun and easy. I do this with regular hook-up-to hose sprinklers
1-turn off hose
2-move sprinkler as close to house as possible, next to windows or doors are the best.( as long as they are closed.)
3- unscrew the hose and leave it running.
I haven’t done this yet but it is very tempting to find the automatic timed sprinkler heads and have a hammer-fest with them.
Why the hell should I have to endure soggy shoes and wet headphones so you can have a green lawn?
OH NO, I’M GETTING DAMP! I’M MELTING, I’M MELTIIIINNNG!!!
Seriously, how hard is it to walk quickly through the spray?
Remember when you were a kid and would play in the sprinkler? It’s kind of like that but with clothes on. I don’t know about you but I find it hard to walk through a stream of water spraying directly across the sidewalk without getting wet. Getting a face full of cold water and damp shoes is not my idea of a good time.
Whaa? Barbarians!
Maybe hopping would work.
The whole point of a sidewalk is to provide an area that pedestrians can use to walk on. Why should I have to hop because some jerk put a sprinkler next to the sidewalk? It’s rude and inconsiderate.
I was kidding. Modern standards require that such things do not happen, especially in drought-stricken states. I know in Utah you can turn them in to the government for squandering water.
That aside, though, it’s just water.
The super for our apartment complex usually waters from 1-7 p.m. Six hours. And inevitably he waters the patch of sidewalk that is the only access to my apartment last, meaning just as I get home from work. I’ve wrenched my back slipping on the wet sidewalk. I’ve scraped myself on the evergreen adjacent to the walkway. Nearly had a contact lens dislodge after getting a faceful of spray.
And in terms of “how hard it is to run and dodge the sprinklers?” Not so hard if I were, say, coming home from the gym. I wouldn’t care about a little water then. But in work clothes and work shoes, carrying my purse, work tote and sometimes dinner and shopping bags, it’s not my idea of fun.
Not to mention the incredible waste of water, and the fact that I can hear my rent increasing with each twitch of the sprinkler.
All I can say is, even though I’m an early a.m. insomniac who is all too frequently awake at 4:47 a.m., I still don’t feel like going out and setting up the sprinkler at that hour.
I’ve been watering my lawn in the evenings (when it needs watering at all) for many years now. No lawn fungi yet, unless you count crabgrass.
My suspicion is that this may be a problem if you water your lawn each and every evening, giving it a good soaking each time. But even in the middle of a drought, my lawn does fine on a decent watering once every five or six days. It’s hard for molds or fungi to get very far under those conditions.
“…I still don’t feel like going out and setting up the sprinkler at that hour.”
Boy, neither would I! When we first bought our house and I was dragging hose during dry spells, it was always in the evening simply because that’s when I had the time and it was most convenient. I did have to apply a fungus spray a couple of times when brown patch broke out but I really had no other alternative timewise.
Then we had an automatic system put in. Just enough goes on only when we need it (as a geologist I’m absolutely anal about not wasting water) and in the entire time, about 5 years, never have the disease problems reoccurred.
You work with what you’ve got. Mornings should be best but evenings aren’t taboo, they just possible raise the chance additional care might need to be given. Apparently for some warmer climes, even that may not be an issue.