Outdoor Water Use for Your Home
Outdoor water use includes activities like lawn and garden watering, car washing, and filling pools. To reduce waste, consider using native or drought-tolerant plants, watering during cooler parts of the day, and maintaining efficient sprinkling systems. Water-wise landscaping and mindful outdoor habits can significantly lower water use while supporting long-term conservation goals.
Understanding your Home’s Outdoor Water Use
Every home has different water use depending on how many people live in a home and what their habits are. However, sprinkling is typically the largest use regardless of how many people live in a home, so how you water a lawn can have a big impact on your water bill.
The average Holland household uses a little over 11,000 gallons of water per month in the summer. That’s about double the average winter month!
This represents an average across all our water customers, so for those customers with lawn irrigation systems, pools, or other large water uses, the summer increase can be more like 5 to 10 times higher than winter use!
Learn how your water use translates into what you pay on your monthly utility bill.
Sprinkling Systems
Watering your lawn is like heating and cooling your home:
- Everyone has their preferences for the “right” settings to use
- Sometimes nature impacts how much you need to do
- And it’s hard to know in the moment whether the choices you are making are the most efficient.
Here are some helpful ideas and suggestions to use irrigation water wisely.
Heatwave Sprinkling Hold Off
Holland BPW’s Heatwave Sprinkling Hold Off helps our residential customers save water on hot, dry days. This initiative encourages water conservation and protects against costly infrastructure investments. Sign up to receive notifications for water conservation action days.
Water Wise Landscaping
Your home’s landscaping design has a large impact on how much watering you need to do. Learn more about how to find resilient native plant options that can thrive with less water and explore alternatives to a conventional turf lawn.
