How much does it cost to water a lawn?

It depends on two things and only one of them is knowable from here. The volume is exact arithmetic: one inch over 1,000 square feet is 623.4 gallons, so a 5,000 sq ft lawn at one inch a week drinks about 3,117 gallons a week and 13,506 a month. The price of those gallons is set by your own utility and can vary by a factor of several between neighbouring systems, before you account for tiers and sewer. That is why this calculator asks for your rate instead of publishing an average — an average would be wrong for effectively every reader, in an unknown direction.

How many gallons does it take to water 1,000 square feet?

623.4 gallons for one inch of water, and it is worth seeing where that comes from rather than taking it on trust. 1,000 sq ft at a depth of one inch is 1,000 × (1/12) = 83.3333 cubic feet. NIST defines "1 728 cubic inches (in3) = 1 cubic foot (ft3)", so that is 144,000 cubic inches. NIST defines "1 gallon (gal) = 231 cubic inches", so 144,000 ÷ 231 = 623.3766 gallons. Both figures are from NIST Handbook 133 (2026), Appendix E, retrieved 5 September 2026. They are definitions of the units, not measurements, so they cannot go out of date.

What is a CCF on my water bill?

EPA WaterSense: "A CCF also called an HCF (hundred cubic feet), represents one hundred cubic feet of water", and "One CCF is equal to 748 gallons." It is the most common billing unit in the United States alongside the plain gallon. This matters enormously for lawn arithmetic, because a rate quoted per CCF and a rate quoted per gallon look like the same kind of number on a statement and differ by a factor of 748. One handy consequence: because a CCF is 100 cubic feet and an inch is a twelfth of a foot, one CCF puts exactly one inch on 1,200 square feet.

Why does this calculator not have a default water price?

Because there is no national water price to default to, and inventing one would make every other number on the page untrustworthy. Water is sold by tens of thousands of separate utilities, districts and private systems, each setting its own schedule. EPA lists five different rate structures — uniform, increasing block, declining block, seasonal and water-budget-based — on the single page that explains a water bill, so an average would be averaging across genuinely incomparable bases. And tiering means the price that applies to irrigation is a marginal price at a consumption level that depends on the household, which no aggregate can represent at all.

Is my lawn watering billed at a higher rate than the rest of my water?

Very possibly, and this is the single most-missed thing on the whole topic. If your utility uses increasing block rates, EPA describes them as "the unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a higher unit rate than the previous block(s)." Indoor use — showers, laundry, dishes — fills the cheap blocks first. Irrigation is added on top, so it lands in your highest occupied tier. The practical consequence is that the right rate to enter above is the top block you actually reach in a summer month, not the bill total divided by the volume, which is always lower under a tiered schedule.

Do I pay sewer charges on water I put on my lawn?

In many places, yes, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. EPA WaterSense: "some utilities measure both water entering the house and waste leaving to the sewer, but many utilities have only one meter on location and will charge both volumes based on water entering the house." Where there is one meter, the wastewater charge is levied on everything that came in, including what went out through a sprinkler head and soaked into the ground. Two things are worth asking your utility: whether a separate irrigation meter is available, and whether they apply a winter-average or summer-cap sewer arrangement. Get the meter fee before deciding; at small volumes a submeter will not pay back.

What weekly watering depth should I enter?

EPA WaterSense’s starting point is "one inch of water a week, including rainfall". Two better sources exist. If your water district publishes a weekly watering figure for its own service area — many do, updated through the season from local weather — use theirs, because they measured your climate and we did not. And if you want to know what your system is ACTUALLY applying rather than what you intended, run the six-can catch-can test on our sprinkler run-time calculator; a great many systems deliver half again what their owner believes, and on this page that is a straight multiplier on the bill.

Does this include the fixed charge on my water bill?

No, deliberately. EPA describes fixed charges as "the price the customer pays as a base charge to help cover costs for maintaining existing infrastructure." They do not change when you water the lawn, so including them would overstate what irrigation costs. The rate to enter here is the volumetric one — the price that moves when you use one more unit of water. This is also why you should not divide your bill total by your volume to get a rate: that blends the fixed charge and the cheap first tier into a number that is wrong for this question in two separate ways.

Does this account for water lost to wind and evaporation?

No, and the effect always runs the same way: your real metered volume is somewhat HIGHER than this tool reports. The calculator prices depth that lands on the grass. Water lost to wind drift, to evaporation from droplets in flight, to spray landing on the driveway, or to a leaking valve or broken head is all metered and billed but never becomes depth. We do not apply an efficiency factor because we have no sourced national figure for one, and an invented coefficient would be exactly the kind of number this page exists to avoid.

What if I am on a well, or on unmetered water?

Then the volume figure is still correct and the money figure is not. This tool assumes every gallon applied is metered and billed by a utility. On a private well your marginal cost is pumping electricity rather than a water rate, and there is usually no sewer charge at all. The gallons-per-week output is still the useful part — it tells you what you are drawing, which matters for pump sizing, for aquifer conditions and for any local drought restriction, even when it does not appear on a bill.

How do I use this with the sprinkler run-time calculator?

They are two halves of the same question and they share one number: depth in inches. The run-time calculator converts a depth into minutes on your controller, using a precipitation rate you measure with six cans in ten minutes. This one converts a depth into gallons and then into money at your rate. Run that one to find out what your system is really applying, then bring the depth here to price it. That tool deliberately publishes no cost figure and this one deliberately publishes no run time, so there is exactly one seam between them.

The seasonal number is enormous. What should I actually do?

In this order, because the free steps frequently find the whole problem. Measure what you are really applying with the catch-can test. Check whether rain is credited at all — a clock-based controller with no rain sensor runs the full schedule into wet ground. Ask your utility the two sewer questions and whether any conservation rebate applies, since rebates are usually conditional on applying before purchase. Then, if the number is still large, the question has changed from how to water more cheaply to how much lawn you want to keep — and our turf rebate calculator prices that swap at your own utility’s published rate. HyreYard sells no controllers and takes no fee from anyone who does.

HyreYard tools

What does your lawn cost in water? Your rate, off your bill, not a national average

One inch over 1,000 square feet is 623 gallons — a figure that falls straight out of the definitions of the cubic foot and the gallon, and that you can check on a calculator. The price of those gallons is the part no calculator can know, so this one asks you for it, and then shows you the two places on your bill where irrigation is billed at more than you think.

623 gal per inch, per 1,000 sq ft 1,000 sq ft × (1/12) ft = 83.3333 cubic feet; × 1,728 cubic inches per cubic foot = 144,000 cubic inches; ÷ 231 cubic inches per gallon = 623.3766 gallons. Both conversions are definitions of the customary units published in NIST Handbook 133 (2026), Appendix E, retrieved 5 September 2026.

The volume half is exact, and you can verify it. Water on a lawn is a box: area × depth. One inch over 1,000 square feet works out at 623.3766 gallons, and the arithmetic above is the whole of it: the two conversions it uses are NIST definitions of the cubic foot and the gallon, quoted verbatim below. A 5,000 sq ft lawn at EPA WaterSense’s one inch a week therefore drinks 3,117 gallons a week.

The price half is not exact, and nobody’s calculator can make it so. There is no national water price. Water is sold by tens of thousands of independent systems, EPA lists five different rate structures on the single page that explains a bill, and most of them are tiered — so the relevant price is a marginal one at a consumption level only your household knows. We publish no default rate. You read yours off your bill, and the tool tells you where to look.

Two structural traps push the real figure above whatever you first calculate. Irrigation lands in your highest occupied rate block rather than the blended average the bill total implies, and many utilities bill sewer volume on the incoming water meter. Both are set out below with the EPA wording, and both have a field in the calculator. What the tool returns is an estimate of metered volume at a rate you typed, not a bill and not a quote.

Your lawn, in gallons and then in money

The volume needs only area and depth. The money needs your own rate — open your bill; the reading guide below says exactly which line. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is emailed.

Irrigated lawn area, square feet

The grass that gets watered — not the lot. Subtract the house, drive, paths and beds. 5,000 is a round placeholder to make the arithmetic visible, not a claim about typical lawn size. Trace it on a satellite map or pace it out.

Water applied per week, inches

EPA WaterSense starting point is 1 inch a week including rainfall. Your water district’s own weekly figure is better if it publishes one. To find what your system ACTUALLY applies, run the six-can test on the run-time calculator.

Rain credited against that, inches per week

Only enter this if your controller genuinely skips for rain — a rain sensor, a smart controller, or you turning it off. A clock-based controller credits nothing and buys the full amount.

Weeks in your watering season (0 to skip)

Left blank on purpose: there is no national irrigation season and we will not invent one. Count your own — roughly first watering to last. Weekly and monthly figures appear either way.

Your bill charges water per…

Your water rate, $ per unit above

Off your own bill. We publish no default because no national water price exists. Use the VOLUMETRIC rate, not the bill total divided by volume — and if your rates are tiered, use the highest block you reach in a summer month.

Sewer rate billed on water volume, $ per same unit

Zero unless your wastewater charge is levied per unit of WATER. EPA notes many utilities meter only the incoming water and bill both volumes on it — in which case your lawn pays sewer on water that never reached a sewer.

— Volume the lawn drinks

— What that costs at your rate

— Cost of one inch across the whole lawn

— The sewer question

— How much of it might be buying nothing

— Three things to verify on your own bill

What this assumed —

An estimate of metered volume priced at a rate you typed. Not a bill, not a prediction of a bill, and not a quote. Fixed service charges, taxes, tier changes triggered by your total household use, and water lost to wind, evaporation and leaks are all outside the model. HyreYard does not install or service irrigation and sells no water.

623 gallons, and here is exactly where the number comes from

One inch of water over 1,000 square feet is 623 gallons. That is not a figure we looked up or a rule of thumb we inherited. It falls out of the legal definitions of the cubic foot and the gallon, and you can check every digit of it on a phone calculator in about twenty seconds.

The derivation, in full. Water applied to a lawn is a box: an area, and a depth. Take 1,000 square feet and one inch of depth, which is one twelfth of a foot.

1,000 sq ft × (1/12) ft            =      83.3333 cubic feet
83.3333 cu ft × 1,728 cu in/cu ft  = 144,000      cubic inches
144,000 cu in ÷ 231 cu in/gallon   =     623.3766 gallons

Source fact. Both conversions are definitions of the United States customary units, published by NIST in the General Tables of Units of Measurement: "1 728 cubic inches (in3) = 1 cubic foot (ft3)" and "1 gallon (gal) = 231 cubic inches". Handbook 133, 2026 edition, Appendix E, retrieved 5 September 2026. They are not measurements of anything and they do not vary by state, season or supplier. This is the one part of the calculation that is certain.

Why we are showing our working at all. Because a reader who can check the geometry does not have to trust us on it — and this is the half of the calculation where a hidden fudge factor would be invisible. Every calculator of this kind multiplies area by depth by some constant. Most do not say what the constant is or where it came from, and a handful use a rounded 620 or 625 that silently drifts one per cent off across a season. Ours is 623.3766, it is used unrounded, and it is derived above.

The useful corollary. Because a CCF is 100 cubic feet and one inch of depth is a twelfth of a foot, one CCF puts exactly one inch on 1,200 square feet. That is a genuinely handy fact to carry: if your bill meters in CCF, and your lawn is 6,000 square feet, then every inch you apply is five units on the bill. No calculator required after that.

HyreYard analysis. Notice which half of this page is certain and which half is not. The volume is arithmetic on definitions and is exact. The price is a local, tiered, seasonally-varying number that only your utility knows. Every calculator that publishes a national water price has the certainty exactly backwards — it presents the unknowable half as a fixed input and buries the knowable half in a coefficient.

Gallons for one inch, by lawn size

The table the whole tool rests on. Find your area, and this is what a single inch of water costs you in volume — in gallons, and in the two units your bill is most likely to use.

Irrigated area	Gallons for 1 inch	CCF (100 cu ft)	Thousand gallons
1,000 sq ft	623	0.83	0.62
2,500 sq ft	1,558	2.08	1.56
5,000 sq ft	3,117	4.17	3.12
7,500 sq ft	4,675	6.25	4.68
10,000 sq ft	6,234	8.33	6.23
15,000 sq ft	9,351	12.50	9.35

HyreYard calculation: area ÷ 1,000 × 623.3766, then divided by 748.0519 gallons per CCF or by 1,000. The constant is derived above from NIST unit definitions. Areas are illustrative round numbers, not claims about typical lawns — measure your own.

Read across, then multiply by the number of inches you apply in a season. That is the entire volume side of the calculation, and it is why the tool asks for depth per week rather than minutes on a controller: minutes are not an amount of water, and the run-time calculator exists to convert between the two.

How to read the four numbers off your own water bill

Reading the bill is the part nobody explains, and it is the part that decides whether the answer is right. Ten minutes with a statement and a highlighter.

1
Find the billing unit, and do not assume it
EPA WaterSense: "The most common units are centum cubic feet (CCF) and the gallon." A CCF "A CCF also called an HCF (hundred cubic feet), represents one hundred cubic feet of water." and "One CCF is equal to 748 gallons." So a bill quoting "$6.40 per unit" means something 748 times larger than a bill quoting "$6.40 per gallon", and both look like ordinary numbers on the page. Some utilities bill per 1,000 gallons, some per cubic foot, some per CCF or HCF. The selector in the calculator has all four. Getting this wrong is not a small error — it is a factor of hundreds.
2
Find the VOLUMETRIC rate, not the total divided by the volume
You want the price that changes when you use another unit of water. EPA describes the other kind: "Fixed charges generally include the price the customer pays as a base charge to help cover costs for maintaining existing infrastructure." Fixed charges do not move when you water the lawn, so including them inflates the apparent cost of irrigation. Dividing the bill total by the volume gives you an average that mixes the two, and it is the wrong number for this question.
3
Find which tier you actually reach in a watering month
If your utility uses increasing block rates, "the unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a higher unit rate than the previous block(s)." Look at a JULY bill, not a February one, and find the highest-priced block that has volume in it. That is the rate your irrigation is billed at, and it is the one to type in. See the section below for why this is the single most commonly-botched input on any calculator of this kind.
4
Find the sewer line and see what it is billed on
EPA: "some utilities measure both water entering the house and waste leaving to the sewer, but many utilities have only one meter on location and will charge both volumes based on water entering the house." If your wastewater charge is a rate per CCF applied to your water volume, enter it in the sewer field — because your lawn is being charged it. If the bill shows a flat sewer charge, or a winter-averaged one, or your irrigation is on its own meter, leave the field at zero. Ask if you cannot tell; this is a question utility billing departments answer routinely.
5
While you are there, check for a seasonal or drought rate
EPA also describes seasonal rates: "rates that cover a specific time period. They are established to encourage conservation during peak use periods." and water-budget rates, where "households are given a "water budget" based on the anticipated needs of that household either by the number of people living in the house and/or property size." Under either, the rate you pay in August is not the one printed on the annual schedule, and under a drought stage it can change mid-season. Enter the summer rate — that is when the lawn drinks.

HyreYard does not supply water, read meters or bill anyone. This is a description of how utility billing is commonly structured, sourced to EPA WaterSense, and your own utility is the authority on your own bill.

The two stings almost every lawn-watering estimate misses

Both are structural, both are invisible unless you look for them, and both push the true cost of irrigation above whatever you first calculated.

Sting one: irrigation is billed at your highest tier, not your average one. Under increasing block rates, EPA states that "the unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a higher unit rate than the previous block(s)." Now think about where irrigation sits in the month. Indoor use — showers, laundry, dishes, toilets — happens first and fills the cheap blocks. Irrigation is added on top of it. So the lawn is not billed at the average price on the statement; it is billed at the marginal price, the last and most expensive block your household reaches.

Which means the intuitive input is the wrong one. Most people, asked for their water rate, look at the bill total, divide by the volume, and get a blended average. Under a tiered schedule that average is always lower than the marginal rate, because it is dragged down by the cheap first block that indoor use occupies. Enter the blended average and you will systematically understate what the lawn costs — and the more you water, the worse the understatement gets, because the higher tiers are exactly what heavy irrigation reaches.

The other direction is worth naming too. Not every utility tiers upward. EPA also describes declining block rates, where "the unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a lower unit rate than the previous block(s).", and uniform rates, "a structure that has a constant per unit price for all metered units of water consumed on a year-round basis." Under a uniform rate the average and the marginal price are the same and none of this matters. The point is not that tiers always bite. It is that you cannot know which structure you are under without looking, and the answer changes the number.

Sting two: sewer charged on water that never entered a sewer. EPA, plainly: "some utilities measure both water entering the house and waste leaving to the sewer, but many utilities have only one meter on location and will charge both volumes based on water entering the house." Read that carefully. Where a property has one meter, the wastewater charge is levied on the volume that came in — including the volume that went out through a sprinkler head, soaked into the ground, and never reached a treatment plant at all. On such a bill the lawn pays twice, and the sewer rate is often the larger of the two.

What to do about it, which is a question and not a purchase. Two things are worth asking your utility. First, whether they offer a separate irrigation meter — a second meter on the outdoor line, whose volume is billed for water but not for sewer. Second, whether they apply a winter average or a summer cap, where the sewer charge is fixed at your cold-month consumption on the reasoning that the summer excess is outdoor use. Many utilities offer one or the other; many offer neither; a submeter carries an installation cost and often a monthly fee. We deliberately do not estimate any of that, because the fees and the availability are entirely local. The tool gives you the volume, which is the number you need to work out whether the question is worth asking at all.

HyreYard analysis, labelled as ours. These two effects compound in the same direction, and they compound hardest for exactly the households that water most. A large lawn pushes deep into the upper tiers and generates a large sewer charge on water that never became sewage. That is not an accident of billing design — increasing block rates exist precisely to make heavy discretionary use expensive. It does mean, though, that the marginal cost of the last inch of water on a big lawn can be several times the headline rate, which is why the tool reports cost per inch as a separate output.

The four billing units, converted

Every row is arithmetic on the two NIST definitions above. Nothing here is measured or estimated, so nothing here can be out of date.

One unit of…	Gallons	Cubic feet	Puts 1 inch on…
1 CCF / HCF (100 cu ft)	748.05	100	1,200 sq ft
1,000 gallons	1,000	133.68	1,604 sq ft
1 cubic foot	7.48	1	12.00 sq ft
1 gallon	1	0.13	1.60 sq ft

HyreYard calculation from NIST Handbook 133 (2026) Appendix E: 1,728 cubic inches to the cubic foot, 231 cubic inches to the gallon. EPA WaterSense rounds the first row to "One CCF is equal to 748 gallons"; our unrounded 748.05 agrees.

The fourth column is the one worth internalising. One CCF is one inch on 1,200 square feet — exactly, because 100 cubic feet divided by a twelfth of a foot is 1,200 square feet with no rounding anywhere.

The scale of the thing, from EPA

Source facts, quoted. These are national statements about the category and none of them is a measurement of your garden.

EPA states that of the water applied to American landscapes, "as much as 50 percent of this water is wasted due to overwatering caused by inefficiencies in irrigation methods and systems".Source: US EPA WaterSense, WaterSense Labeled Controllers, retrieved 5 September 2026. An upper bound for the category nationally, not a measurement of any individual system.

8 bn gala day of US residential outdoor water use, "nearly 8 billion gallons of water each day, mainly for landscape irrigation"EPA WaterSense, retrieved 5 September 2026

50%the upper bound EPA puts on waste: "as much as 50 percent of this water is wasted due to overwatering caused by inefficiencies in irrigation methods and systems"EPA WaterSense, retrieved 5 September 2026

15,000 gala year, what EPA says replacing a clock-based controller with a WaterSense labelled one can save an average homeEPA WaterSense, retrieved 5 September 2026

748gallons in one CCF — the unit conversion that silently breaks most bill arithmeticEPA WaterSense; matches our derived 748.05

The reason this belongs on a cost page: if the national figure is even roughly right for your system, then half of whatever number the calculator returns is buying nothing. That is not a saving you get by shopping for cheaper water. It is a saving you get by applying less, and the first step is finding out how much you are actually applying.

Why there is no water price anywhere on this page

Every competing calculator of this kind has one. It is the single decision that makes them useless, and it is worth explaining rather than just avoiding.

Because there is no such thing as a national water price. Water in the United States is sold by tens of thousands of separate systems — municipal utilities, districts, authorities, private companies, co-operatives — each setting its own schedule under its own governance, against its own supply costs, its own debt and its own conservation policy. A household on a deep well and a septic tank pays nothing per gallon and no sewer charge at all. A household two counties over on a stressed surface supply may be in a fourth-tier drought rate. An average across those is not a description of anywhere.

Because the structures are not comparable either. EPA lists uniform rates, increasing block rates, declining block rates, seasonal rates and water-budget-based rates on the single page that explains a water bill. Averaging a price across systems that price on genuinely different bases produces a number with no defensible meaning even before you ask whether it is current.

Because it would be the only unverifiable figure here. Everything else on this page is either a definition you can check with a calculator, a quotation from a named EPA document with a retrieval date, or a number you supplied. A national average price would be the one input a reader could neither check nor correct — and it would be wrong for effectively all of them, in an unknown direction, by an unknown amount.

And because the honest version is more useful anyway. The tool asks you for four minutes with your own bill. In exchange, the answer is about your house rather than about a national aggregate. That trade is the entire design of this page, and it is the same trade the turf rebate calculator makes with rebate rates and the run-time calculator makes with precipitation rates. Where a number is genuinely local, we ask for it. Where it is universal, we derive it and show the working.

What we would publish if we could. Nothing, in fairness. Even a well-sourced national average price of water would be actively harmful in this specific calculation, because tiering means the relevant price is not an average at all — it is a marginal price at a consumption level that depends on the household. There is no aggregate that answers this question. The only correct move is to ask.

If the number is bigger than you expected

Ranked roughly by how much they move the answer per unit of effort. These are HyreYard recommendations, not source statements.

Find out how much water you are actually applying
This is first because everything else is guesswork without it. The depth you type into this calculator is an assumption until you have run the six-can catch-can test on the run-time calculator — ten minutes, six straight-sided cans and a ruler. A great many systems are applying half again what their owner thinks, and on this page that is a straight multiplier on the bill.
Check whether rain is being credited at all
EPA’s one-inch-a-week target is inclusive of rainfall. A clock-based controller with no rain sensor does not know that, and runs the full schedule into wet ground. The rain field in this calculator shows you what that costs per week; a rain sensor or a soil-moisture sensor is the fix, and in some states one is required.
Ask your utility the two sewer questions
Whether an irrigation submeter is available, and whether a winter-average or summer-cap sewer arrangement exists. Where sewer rides on the water meter, this is often the largest single line you can remove, and it costs a phone call to find out. Get the meter fee before deciding — a submeter is not free and at a small volume it will not pay back.
Ask about a conservation rebate before you buy anything
EPA states that a WaterSense labelled controller "can save an average home up to 15,000 gallons of water annually". Many utilities rebate exactly these devices, and the rebate is usually conditional on applying BEFORE purchase. The same is true of turf conversion.
Price the alternative to the lawn, at your own numbers
If the seasonal figure is large, the question stops being "how do I water this more cheaply" and becomes "how much of this do I want to keep". The turf rebate calculator prices removing turf at your own utility’s published rate and cap, and our turf rebate programme research covers what the programmes actually require. The water saving from the removed area is the per-inch figure on this page, multiplied by your season.
Check what you are allowed to do before you optimise
Watering-day rules, permitted hours and drought stages override any schedule, and they change during a drought. Our watering restrictions research covers how these are structured. A schedule that violates a stage restriction is a fine, not a saving.
Do not buy your way out of it first
The order above is deliberate. Measurement and billing questions cost nothing and frequently find the whole problem. Hardware costs money and only helps if the schedule was the issue. HyreYard sells no controllers, installs no irrigation and takes no fee from anyone who does — this ordering is not a route to a purchase.

What this tool is not

The estimate is not a bill and not a prediction of one. It estimates the metered volume your stated irrigation would consume, and prices it at a rate you typed. Your actual bill includes fixed service charges, indoor use, any tier changes your total consumption triggers, taxes and local fees, none of which are modelled here.

It assumes every gallon applied is metered and billed. That is untrue for anyone on a private well, on a shared or unmetered supply, or drawing from harvested rainwater or a reclaimed-water line at a different rate. If any of those describe you, the volume figure is still correct and the money figure is not.

It measures depth on the lawn, not water through the meter. Those differ, and always in the same direction. Wind drift, evaporation from droplets in flight, spray landing on pavement, a leaking valve or a broken head all consume metered water that never becomes depth on the grass. So the true metered volume is somewhat higher than this tool reports. We do not apply an efficiency factor, because we have no sourced national figure for one and an invented coefficient would be exactly the kind of number this page exists to avoid.

It does not model your indoor use, so it cannot tell you your tier. It can only tell you that the tier matters and that the marginal rate is the right one to enter. Working out which block your household actually reaches in July requires your own bill, and that is why the reading guide above exists.

It is not horticultural advice. How much water a given lawn genuinely needs depends on grass species, soil, sun, wind and season, and it is not a question a cost calculator can answer. This tool takes your depth as given and prices it.

And HyreYard is not in the water business. We do not install or service irrigation, do not sell controllers or water, and take no commission from anyone who does. Nothing on this page is a quote, and every figure in it is either derived from a published unit definition, quoted from EPA with a retrieval date, or supplied by you.

How this calculator works

The published formula is the formula that runs. There is no hidden efficiency coefficient, no rounded constant and no price table anywhere in this tool.

net depth   = max(0, weekly inches − rain inches)

GAL/IN/KSF  = 1,000 × (1/12) × (1,728 ÷ 231)  =  623.3766 gallons
              ── area ──   ── depth ──  ── NIST unit definitions ──

gallons/wk  = (area ÷ 1,000) × net depth × 623.3766
gallons/mo  = gallons/wk × (52 ÷ 12)
gallons/season = gallons/wk × weeks          (only if weeks entered)

gal per unit = 748.0519 for CCF · 1,000 for kgal · 1 for gal · 7.4805 for cu ft
cost        = (gallons ÷ gal per unit) × (water rate + sewer rate)

cost/inch   = ((area ÷ 1,000) × 623.3766 ÷ gal per unit) × (rate + sewer)

The constant is derived, not looked up. 1,000 sq ft × (1/12) ft = 83.3333 cubic feet. NIST: "1 728 cubic inches (in3) = 1 cubic foot (ft3)", so that is 144,000 cubic inches. NIST: "1 gallon (gal) = 231 cubic inches", so that is 144,000 ÷ 231 = 623.3766 gallons. NIST Handbook 133 (2026), Appendix E, retrieved 5 September 2026. It is carried unrounded through every calculation — a rounded 620 or 625, which several published calculators use, drifts about half a per cent to one per cent across a season.

Worked, at the form defaults plus a rate. 5,000 sq ft, 1 inch a week, no rain credited, a 26-week season, and $5.00 per CCF with no sewer. Volume: (5,000 ÷ 1,000) × 1 × 623.3766 = 3,117 gallons a week, which is 3,117 ÷ 748.0519 = 4.17 CCF. Monthly: 3,117 × 4.3333 = 13,506 gallons. Season: 3,117 × 26 = 81,039 gallons. Money: 4.17 CCF × $5.00 = $20.83 a week, $90.28 a month, $542 over the season.

Now add the sewer. Same lawn, same rate, plus a $7.00 per CCF sewer charge levied on water volume. The combined rate is $12.00 per CCF and the season goes from $542 to $1,300. The sewer line alone is $126 a month on water that soaked into the ground. That is not an edge case — EPA describes single-meter billing as what "many utilities" do.

And the tier. Same lawn, no sewer, but the reader looks again and finds their summer usage is actually in a third block at $11.00 per CCF rather than the $5.00 first-block price they first entered. The season goes from $542 to $1,192. Nothing about the lawn changed. Only the honesty of the input did.

What each input means

Inputs on this tool, in the order they appear on the form.
Input	What it is actually asking
Irrigated lawn area	The square footage of grass that actually receives water — not the lot size, and not the area a landscaper quoted for mowing. WHERE TO FIND IT: trace the lawn on a satellite mapping tool with an area measurement function, or pace the perimeter (a normal adult stride is close to three feet, and you can calibrate yours against a known length like a driveway) and multiply. Subtract the house footprint, drive, paths, patio and planted beds. Irregular shapes: break them into rectangles and triangles and add them up. This input scales the answer linearly, so a careless estimate here is the largest avoidable error on the page.
Water applied per week, inches	The DEPTH of water your system puts on the grass in a week — the single most important input you can improve. WHERE TO FIND IT, in ascending order of honesty: EPA WaterSense’s one-inch-a-week starting point, which is on the form as the default; your water district’s published weekly watering figure for its own service area, which many publish and update through the season and which beats any national number including ours; or the actual depth your system delivers, which you get by measuring your precipitation rate with six cans in ten minutes on our run-time calculator and multiplying by your programmed minutes. The third is the only one that is about your garden.
Rain credited per week, inches	Rainfall that reduces what the irrigation system has to buy, subtracted because EPA’s target is inclusive of rain. WHERE TO FIND IT: a cheap rain gauge sited in the open is the honest source; a weather app reports the nearest station, which can be miles away and a different shower. THE CATCH: only enter this if the water is genuinely not being bought. A clock-based controller with no rain sensor runs the full schedule into wet ground and credits nothing, so for that system the correct entry is zero even in a wet week. The gap between the two is one of the most expensive things this calculator can show you.
Weeks in your watering season	How many weeks a year you run the system. Deliberately blank, because there is no national irrigation season and publishing a default would be inventing one — a lawn in the desert southwest and a lawn in the Pacific northwest do not share a season in any meaningful sense. WHERE TO FIND IT: your own memory of when you switch the controller on and off, or your utility’s summer-rate period, or a drought-restriction calendar if your area has one. Weekly and monthly figures are returned whether or not you fill this in.
Billing unit	Which unit of volume your utility prices. EPA: "The most common units are centum cubic feet (CCF) and the gallon", and a CCF "represents one hundred cubic feet of water" and "is equal to 748 gallons". WHERE TO FIND IT: the consumption section of your bill, usually next to the meter reading, labelled CCF, HCF, units, gallons, kgal or cu ft. GET THIS RIGHT FIRST: a rate per CCF and a rate per gallon look identical as numbers on a page and differ by a factor of 748, so this is the input where a mistake is catastrophic rather than merely inaccurate.
Water rate, $ per unit	The volumetric price of water — the amount the bill goes up when you use one more unit. WHERE TO FIND IT: the rate schedule, or the line on the bill that shows units × price. TWO TRAPS. Do not use the bill total divided by the volume: that blends in the fixed service charge, which EPA describes as "the price the customer pays as a base charge to help cover costs for maintaining existing infrastructure" and which does not change when you water. And if your rates are tiered, do not use the first block: irrigation sits on top of indoor use, so the applicable price is the highest block you reach in a summer month. Look at a July bill, not a February one.
Sewer rate billed on water volume	The wastewater charge, but ONLY if it is levied per unit of water consumed. WHERE TO FIND IT: the sewer or wastewater section of the same bill. If it shows a rate multiplied by the same volume as the water charge, that is the number and your lawn is paying it. If it is a flat monthly charge, a winter-averaged charge, or you have a separate irrigation meter, enter zero. EPA on why this exists: "many utilities have only one meter on location and will charge both volumes based on water entering the house." Where it applies it is frequently the larger of the two rates.

Worked examples

Including one where the naive answer misleads, which is the example most calculators leave out.

The baseline: 5,000 sq ft, one inch a week, $5.00 per CCF

A 26-week season and no sewer charge entered. The tool returns 3,117 gallons a week — 13,506 a month, 81,039 over a 26-week season, and prices it at $90.28 a month, $542 over the season. The per-inch line reads $20.83 to put one inch across 5,000 sq ft, and that is the figure worth carrying, because it is independent of your schedule: every extra inch over a season costs that, whether it arrives as one deep soak or fourteen shallow ones.

Add the sewer charge and the season more than doubles

Change one field. Same lawn, same $5.00 water, plus a $7.00 per CCF sewer rate billed on water volume. The season goes from $542 to $1,300, and the tool separates out the sting: $126 a month of that is the sewer charge on water that went into the ground. This is the field most people leave at zero without checking, and on a single-metered property it is wrong to do so. The tool responds by telling you the two questions to ask the utility — irrigation submeter, or summer sewer cap.

The tier correction, which costs nothing but honesty

Same lawn, no sewer, but the reader goes back to a July bill and finds their irrigation is landing in a third block at $11.00 per CCF rather than the $5.00 first-block price they first typed. The season goes from $542 to $1,192 and the monthly from $90.28 to $199. Not one thing about the lawn changed. This is the difference between the blended average most people reach for and the marginal rate that actually applies, and on a tiered schedule it always runs in this direction.

Overwatering by half an inch a week

Suppose the catch-can test reveals the system is delivering 1.5 inches a week rather than the 1 inch intended — a very ordinary discovery on a system nobody has audited. At $5.00 per CCF the season goes from $542 to $813 and the weekly volume from 3,117 to 4,675 gallons. The extra half inch buys nothing agronomically; EPA notes that watering too frequently can drown plants and produce shallow roots. Ten minutes with six cans is what finds this.

Rain actually being credited

Half an inch of rain in a week, against a one-inch target, on a system that genuinely skips. Weekly volume halves to 1,558 gallons and the weekly cost to $10.42. Note that the per-inch figure stays at $20.83 — it is deliberately independent of the schedule. The gap between this scenario and the baseline is exactly what a rain sensor is worth in a wet week, and exactly what a clock-based controller with no sensor throws away.

Half the lawn

Same everything, 2,500 sq ft instead of 5,000. Volume halves to 1,558 gallons a week, 40,519 over the season, and the cost to $45.14 a month, $271 for the season. Area is a straight linear multiplier, which is the arithmetic underneath every turf conversion rebate: the water saved by removing an area is simply that area’s share of this number. Our turf rebate calculator takes it from there at your own utility’s published rate.

What changes the result

What actually moves the answer, ranked.

1. The rate you enter, and whether it is the right one. A straight multiplier on the money, and the input with by far the widest plausible range — not because we do not know it, but because it genuinely differs by a large factor between utilities, and because tiering means two households on the SAME utility can face different marginal prices. Correcting a first-block rate to the marginal one moved our worked example from $542 to $1,192 a season without touching the lawn.

2. Whether sewer rides on the water meter. Binary, easy to miss, and frequently the larger of the two rates. In the worked example it more than doubled the season. There is no way to guess it from here; it is a line on your bill or a question to your billing department.

3. Lawn area. Linear and exact. Nothing subtle about it — but it is the input people estimate most carelessly, usually by reaching for the lot size instead of the grass.

4. Applied depth. Also linear, and the input most worth measuring rather than assuming. The difference between what a controller is programmed to deliver and what the heads actually deliver is routinely 50 per cent or more, and it runs in both directions.

5. Season length. Linear on the seasonal total and irrelevant to the weekly and per-inch figures. Left blank by default because no national season exists.

6. Rain credited. Subtracted directly, capable of taking a week to zero, and worth exactly nothing on a controller that does not know it rained.

What is deliberately absent, and why.

No water price. The defining omission. There is no national water price; EPA lists five different rate structures on the page that explains a bill, and under the most common one the applicable price is marginal rather than average. A default here would have been the only figure on the page a reader could neither check nor correct, and it would have been wrong for effectively all of them.

No irrigation efficiency factor. Wind drift, evaporation in flight, spray on pavement and leaks all consume metered water that never becomes depth on the grass, so the true metered volume is above what this reports. We publish no coefficient for it because we have no sourced national figure, and the error is at least in a known direction and stated plainly rather than buried in a multiplier.

No evapotranspiration model. The topic plan called for county gridded reference ET. Not shipped: it would have to be frozen into the page, and it answers a less binding question than "what is your utility charging you". Your district’s own weekly watering figure is the local adjustment, from a body that measured your climate.

No fixed service charge. Excluded on purpose. It does not change when you water, so including it would overstate the marginal cost of irrigation — which is the only cost this page is about.

No run time in minutes. That is the sprinkler run-time calculator, which was built to own it. This page prices depth; that page schedules it. Depth in inches is the seam, and neither tool restates the other’s arithmetic.

Local considerations

Almost everything expensive about this question is local. The rate, the structure, the tier boundaries, the sewer basis, the season length, the drought stage and the permitted watering days are all set by bodies that publish for one service area. That is not a shortcoming of the tool; it is the reason the tool is built to accept your numbers rather than assert its own. The arithmetic is universal, the prices are not, and the two should come from different places.

Your district may already publish the depth you need. Many water providers and conservation programmes publish a weekly watering figure for their own service area, updated through the season from local weather. Where one exists it is strictly better than EPA’s national inch-a-week starting point, and the calculator has a field for it.

Rebates are local, conditional and usually pre-approval. EPA states a WaterSense labelled controller "can save an average home up to 15,000 gallons of water annually", and many utilities rebate exactly that hardware — but almost always only if you apply before you buy. The same applies to turf conversion; our turf rebate programme research covers what the programmes require and where they differ, and the turf rebate calculator prices a conversion at your own utility’s published rate and cap.

Restrictions override arithmetic. Watering days, permitted hours and drought stages are set by state and district and change mid-season. Our watering restrictions research covers how they are structured. A cheaper schedule that violates a stage restriction is a fine, not a saving.

When not to use this

Do not use it as a bill forecast. It prices the marginal volume your irrigation consumes. Your bill also contains indoor use, fixed charges, taxes and local fees, and your total consumption may cross a tier boundary that changes the rate mid-month. None of that is modelled.

Do not use it on a private well or an unmetered supply. The gallons are still right and still useful — for pump sizing, aquifer awareness and drought restrictions — but the money is not, because your marginal cost is pumping electricity rather than a water rate.

Do not use a blended average rate. Under a tiered schedule the blended average is always below the marginal price that irrigation actually pays. Entering it understates the answer, and understates it most for the people watering most.

Do not use it for drip irrigation without converting first. Drip is rated in gallons per hour per emitter, not depth over an area. If you know the gallons your drip system delivers, you already have the volume this page converts to money — start from there rather than from an inch figure.

Do not treat the depth as horticultural advice. How much water a lawn genuinely needs depends on species, soil, sun, wind and season. This tool takes whatever depth you give it and prices it; it has no opinion on whether that depth is right for your grass.

And do not treat any of it as a quote. HyreYard does not install or service irrigation, does not sell controllers or water, and takes no fee from anyone who does. Every figure here is either derived from a published unit definition, quoted from EPA with a retrieval date, or one you supplied.

Related on this site

Sprinkler run time calculator Converts depth to minutes with a precipitation rate you measure. The depth is the seam between the two tools.
Turf rebate Prices removing turf at your own utility’s rate and cap.
Turf rebate programmes What the conversion programmes actually require.
Watering restrictions tracker Days, hours and drought stages, which override any schedule.

Questions this calculator answers

How much does it cost to water a lawn?: It depends on two things and only one of them is knowable from here. The volume is exact arithmetic: one inch over 1,000 square feet is 623.4 gallons, so a 5,000 sq ft lawn at one inch a week drinks about 3,117 gallons a week and 13,506 a month. The price of those gallons is set by your own utility and can vary by a factor of several between neighbouring systems, before you account for tiers and sewer. That is why this calculator asks for your rate instead of publishing an average — an average would be wrong for effectively every reader, in an unknown direction.
How many gallons does it take to water 1,000 square feet?: 623.4 gallons for one inch of water, and it is worth seeing where that comes from rather than taking it on trust. 1,000 sq ft at a depth of one inch is 1,000 × (1/12) = 83.3333 cubic feet. NIST defines "1 728 cubic inches (in3) = 1 cubic foot (ft3)", so that is 144,000 cubic inches. NIST defines "1 gallon (gal) = 231 cubic inches", so 144,000 ÷ 231 = 623.3766 gallons. Both figures are from NIST Handbook 133 (2026), Appendix E, retrieved 5 September 2026. They are definitions of the units, not measurements, so they cannot go out of date.
What is a CCF on my water bill?: EPA WaterSense: "A CCF also called an HCF (hundred cubic feet), represents one hundred cubic feet of water", and "One CCF is equal to 748 gallons." It is the most common billing unit in the United States alongside the plain gallon. This matters enormously for lawn arithmetic, because a rate quoted per CCF and a rate quoted per gallon look like the same kind of number on a statement and differ by a factor of 748. One handy consequence: because a CCF is 100 cubic feet and an inch is a twelfth of a foot, one CCF puts exactly one inch on 1,200 square feet.
Why does this calculator not have a default water price?: Because there is no national water price to default to, and inventing one would make every other number on the page untrustworthy. Water is sold by tens of thousands of separate utilities, districts and private systems, each setting its own schedule. EPA lists five different rate structures — uniform, increasing block, declining block, seasonal and water-budget-based — on the single page that explains a water bill, so an average would be averaging across genuinely incomparable bases. And tiering means the price that applies to irrigation is a marginal price at a consumption level that depends on the household, which no aggregate can represent at all.
Is my lawn watering billed at a higher rate than the rest of my water?: Very possibly, and this is the single most-missed thing on the whole topic. If your utility uses increasing block rates, EPA describes them as "the unit price of each succeeding block of usage is charged at a higher unit rate than the previous block(s)." Indoor use — showers, laundry, dishes — fills the cheap blocks first. Irrigation is added on top, so it lands in your highest occupied tier. The practical consequence is that the right rate to enter above is the top block you actually reach in a summer month, not the bill total divided by the volume, which is always lower under a tiered schedule.
Do I pay sewer charges on water I put on my lawn?: In many places, yes, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. EPA WaterSense: "some utilities measure both water entering the house and waste leaving to the sewer, but many utilities have only one meter on location and will charge both volumes based on water entering the house." Where there is one meter, the wastewater charge is levied on everything that came in, including what went out through a sprinkler head and soaked into the ground. Two things are worth asking your utility: whether a separate irrigation meter is available, and whether they apply a winter-average or summer-cap sewer arrangement. Get the meter fee before deciding; at small volumes a submeter will not pay back.
What weekly watering depth should I enter?: EPA WaterSense’s starting point is "one inch of water a week, including rainfall". Two better sources exist. If your water district publishes a weekly watering figure for its own service area — many do, updated through the season from local weather — use theirs, because they measured your climate and we did not. And if you want to know what your system is ACTUALLY applying rather than what you intended, run the six-can catch-can test on our sprinkler run-time calculator; a great many systems deliver half again what their owner believes, and on this page that is a straight multiplier on the bill.
Does this include the fixed charge on my water bill?: No, deliberately. EPA describes fixed charges as "the price the customer pays as a base charge to help cover costs for maintaining existing infrastructure." They do not change when you water the lawn, so including them would overstate what irrigation costs. The rate to enter here is the volumetric one — the price that moves when you use one more unit of water. This is also why you should not divide your bill total by your volume to get a rate: that blends the fixed charge and the cheap first tier into a number that is wrong for this question in two separate ways.
Does this account for water lost to wind and evaporation?: No, and the effect always runs the same way: your real metered volume is somewhat HIGHER than this tool reports. The calculator prices depth that lands on the grass. Water lost to wind drift, to evaporation from droplets in flight, to spray landing on the driveway, or to a leaking valve or broken head is all metered and billed but never becomes depth. We do not apply an efficiency factor because we have no sourced national figure for one, and an invented coefficient would be exactly the kind of number this page exists to avoid.
What if I am on a well, or on unmetered water?: Then the volume figure is still correct and the money figure is not. This tool assumes every gallon applied is metered and billed by a utility. On a private well your marginal cost is pumping electricity rather than a water rate, and there is usually no sewer charge at all. The gallons-per-week output is still the useful part — it tells you what you are drawing, which matters for pump sizing, for aquifer conditions and for any local drought restriction, even when it does not appear on a bill.
How do I use this with the sprinkler run-time calculator?: They are two halves of the same question and they share one number: depth in inches. The run-time calculator converts a depth into minutes on your controller, using a precipitation rate you measure with six cans in ten minutes. This one converts a depth into gallons and then into money at your rate. Run that one to find out what your system is really applying, then bring the depth here to price it. That tool deliberately publishes no cost figure and this one deliberately publishes no run time, so there is exactly one seam between them.
The seasonal number is enormous. What should I actually do?: In this order, because the free steps frequently find the whole problem. Measure what you are really applying with the catch-can test. Check whether rain is credited at all — a clock-based controller with no rain sensor runs the full schedule into wet ground. Ask your utility the two sewer questions and whether any conservation rebate applies, since rebates are usually conditional on applying before purchase. Then, if the number is still large, the question has changed from how to water more cheaply to how much lawn you want to keep — and our turf rebate calculator prices that swap at your own utility’s published rate. HyreYard sells no controllers and takes no fee from anyone who does.

Sources and methodology

Figures dated 5 September 2026. Last reviewed September 18, 2026.

Understanding Your Water Bill (US Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense, retrieved 2026-09-05. Read in full. The load-bearing source for this page. Supplies the billing units ("The most common units are centum cubic feet (CCF) and the gallon", "One CCF is equal to 748 gallons"), the five rate structures including the increasing-block definition quoted throughout, the definition of a fixed charge, and the statement that many utilities bill sewer volume on the water meter.)
NIST Handbook 133 (2026), Appendix E — General Tables of Units of Measurement (National Institute of Standards and Technology, retrieved 2026-09-05. Read as the published PDF. Source of the two unit definitions the entire volume calculation is derived from, quoted verbatim: "1 728 cubic inches (in3) = 1 cubic foot (ft3)" and "1 gallon (gal) = 231 cubic inches". These are definitions rather than measurements, which is why the 623.3766 gallons-per-inch-per-1,000-sq-ft constant is checkable rather than merely citable.)
Watering Tips (US Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense, retrieved 2026-09-05. Source of the one-inch-a-week-including-rainfall starting depth used as the form default, quoted verbatim: "Your landscape will typically require one inch of water a week, including rainfall".)
WaterSense Labeled Controllers (US Environmental Protection Agency, WaterSense, retrieved 2026-09-05. Source of the statement that "as much as 50 percent of this water is wasted due to overwatering caused by inefficiencies in irrigation methods and systems", and of the figure that a WaterSense labelled controller "can save an average home up to 15,000 gallons of water annually". Both are national statements about the category; neither is presented here as a measurement of any individual system.)
WaterSense: Outdoors (US Environmental Protection Agency, retrieved 2026-09-05. Source of the national scale figure quoted in the statistics band: residential outdoor water use "accounts for nearly 8 billion gallons of water each day, mainly for landscape irrigation", and the statement that the average US household uses more water outdoors than for showering and washing clothes combined.)

Irrigation systems EPA WaterSense on the half of outdoor water that is wasted, and what to do about it.
Sprinkler run time calculator The other half. It converts a depth into minutes on your controller, using a rate you measure with six cans. Run it first to find out what you are really applying, then price that depth here.
Turf rebate The natural next step if this number shocked you. Prices removing turf at your own utility’s published rate and cap.
Turf rebate programmes, researched What the conversion programmes actually require, and where they differ.
Watering restrictions tracker Days, hours and drought stages override any schedule, including one you calculated.
Landscaping cost estimator If irrigation is one line in a larger project budget.

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