Water lawn in a 1 acre home? (Austin, Georgetown: apartment, HOA, how much)

[pl123]

I’m thinking about getting a home that has 1 acre. I’ve been an apartment dweller all my life.

- Do people water their lawns in a huge 1 acre lot?
- Would an HOA require a certain quality of lawn?
- What’s the high end of a water bill to water such a bing lawn? $300?

[Need4Camaro]

Not qualified to answer but I would be curious if you would even be allowed to do it, we get watering restrictions on outdoor watering all the time.

[atxcio]

Originally Posted by pl123

I’m thinking about getting a home that has 1 acre. I’ve been an apartment dweller all my life.

- Do people water their lawns in a huge 1 acre lot?

Depends on where it is. Rural lot, rural "estates" type subdivisions, maybe they only landscape/water part of the lot and the rest they leave native and natural. 1 acre lot in Westlake or something, and yes they may water the whole thing if it's flat. But there are a lot of steep lots where you couldn't even have a lawn on much more than a fraction of the lot.

Originally Posted by pl123

- Would an HOA require a certain quality of lawn?

Yes, they might. Depends on the HOA like above.

Originally Posted by pl123

- What’s the high end of a water bill to water such a bing lawn? $300?

Depends on who provides the water. But during the summer months it could be a lot more than $300. More like $800 if it's a dry month and the entire acre is lawn. Some people definitely do that, but there are usually always landscaping options to lower the water consumption.

[pl123]

This is around Liberty Hill. $800 for watering just to see green is as crazy as the market is. Seems like a huge waste of money and water. Turns an asset into a liability for sure.

[ashbeeigh]

I’m sure you’d have some type of watering system, especially in the are just use as a backyard. My parents are looking for a lot of .5-1.5 acres and there’s never been any discussion of not watering the grass. Just have a smaller area fenced and use that as a “yard” and maintain that and throw some Agar, occasionally on the unfenced area.

I know the Estates at Shady hollow has large lots like that and when I worked over there the yards were immaculate. There were always landscaping guys in yards and residents keeping an eye on the yards.

[Tigger84Ag]

Originally Posted by pl123

I’m thinking about getting a home that has 1 acre. I’ve been an apartment dweller all my life.

- Do people water their lawns in a huge 1 acre lot?
- Would an HOA require a certain quality of lawn?
- What’s the high end of a water bill to water such a bing lawn? $300?

We have 3/4 if an acre and our water bill runs about $180, and our grass is green and beautiful.

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by atxcio

Depends on where it is. Rural lot, rural "estates" type subdivisions, maybe they only landscape/water part of the lot and the rest they leave native and natural. 1 acre lot in Westlake or something, and yes they may water the whole thing if it's flat. But there are a lot of steep lots where you couldn't even have a lawn on much more than a fraction of the lot.

Yes, they might. Depends on the HOA like above.

Depends on who provides the water. But during the summer months it could be a lot more than $300. More like $800 if it's a dry month and the entire acre is lawn. Some people definitely do that, but there are usually always landscaping options to lower the water consumption.

Both my brothers have level one acre lots with timed sprinkler systems near Georgetown.
They water about 3/4 of their lots, and their water bills can run upwards of $600/month.

[10scoachrick]

Originally Posted by Tigger84Ag

We have 3/4 if an acre and our water bill runs about $180, and our grass is green and beautiful.

If you had a water bill like that in JUNE, our neighbors would like to know your secret, since they are paying twice that for half the lot size.

[ATX Wahine]

We have a two acre lot. We stopped watering the pristine St. Augustine the day we moved in. We still have wonderful green circles of it around all of our trees, but native grass has filled in the other areas. It still looks pretty nice overall, and watering the trees (which is much more important to us) keeps those green patches really nice.

I think watering enormous lawns here in parched Texas is a somewhat negligent idea, unless you keep a few rain barrels around and use that to water. Xeriscaping, with small patches of green grass, is the way to go.

[Trainwreck20]

It depends a lot on where you are located and how much of the acre you water. In our worst months, when we get an 'extra' watering cycle in the billing period and it is August, we have used just around 20,000 gallons. We have ~1/6 of an acre where the turf is predominantly St. Augustine, but 40% or so of that 1/6 acre is not watered - either house, patio, sidewalks, shed, etc.

In any case, I hope you don't have a full acre of St. A in full sun or anything. That would be incredible painful in the summer, although you do not need to water at all for 1/2 the year.

A chart below shows the cost at a few places around the area based on usage. As is 'typical' of the area, Austin is the cheapest for a low usage customer and most expensive for the high usage customer. This carries over to electricity, as well.