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Tuesday May 30, 2006

Watering Restrictions

My yard was looking seriously parched this weekend. I don't usually water the yard, but it was needing it. I wasn't sure what the rules were on watering so I checked Dekalb County's website. I had thought the rule was if you had an odd-numbered address you could water on odd-numbered days. However, the current rule is that odd-numbered addresses can only water on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Even-numbered addresses can water on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday. There is no watering on Friday.

I told this to Susan and said how ridiculous it was that they took something so easy to remember and made it much harder to remember. Having vented about that I gave it no further thought. However Susan wrote to me today after thinking about it during her drive to work. She calculated that a year has 7 more odd-numbered days than even-numbered ones and that 3 of those are from May to August. Under the old system an odd-numbered house could water on May 31 and again the next day, June 1 while the yards of even-numbered houses would wither and become dust bowls. She blames a misplaced sense of fairness for the more complicated rules, probably by someone with an even-numbered address. But, like I told her, if people don't want to abide by rules against even-numbered addresses, then they need to buy a house on the other side of the street.


Comments (6)

I don't know what our rules are and try not to pay attention. Saving money keeps me conservative. I think there a rules about burning limbs, but I don't know what they are either. About twice a year I just burn up everything I've accumulated. Usually takes 4 or 5 hours. I only do it if there has been a rain and things are not too dry.

Oh... Kathy told me that Danny had been watering the brown patches in the front yard last week. He's a good kid, but it won't help. Those patches are all crabgrass that I sprayed the previous weekend using Bayer weedkiller. Bermuda seems to love the heat and is filling in nicely. Should never have let the crabgrass emerge.

That was good thinking on Susan's part. I did know that odd numbered days fell together when there are 31 days in a month. They also do on election year when there is a February 29. Right?

When we had our sprinkler system put in, the guy programmed it for Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, so he evidently knew the rules.

It would be hard for people to know when to water if they didn't know the date anyway.
I hope Jeb doesn't collect too many limbs during the year. The fat hairy ones probably smell terrible.

Now Dekalb has banned all outdoor watering. That's a pretty easy system to remember.

Dekalb's ban didn't last long. They went back to the normal restrictions (Mom's post clued me in that the new system was done for the benefit of sprinkler systems) only now the hours for watering are restricted to 12 AM to 10 AM. And now they've changed again to where everybody can water on Mondays and Thursdays only. Link

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