Lawn Watering Days in Melbourne — Melbourne, Florida

The City of Melbourne irrigation schedule assigns lawn watering days by the final digit of a property's street address. During daylight saving time, homes with odd-numbered addresses, meaning those ending in 1, 3, 5, 7 or 9, and homes with no address at all may water on Wednesdays and/or Saturdays. Homes with even-numbered addresses, ending in 0, 2, 4, 6 or 8, may water on Thursdays and/or Sundays. Nonresidential properties in Melbourne may water on Tuesdays and/or Fridays.

The listed days work as a ceiling rather than a quota. The city frames the rule around watering only when needed, so the two days are the most a Melbourne lawn may be irrigated in a week, not a requirement to run sprinklers twice. Because the assignment follows the address digit and not a neighborhood boundary, the same pattern applies across the city, from Eau Gallie in the north of the city to the neighborhoods around Melbourne Orlando International Airport.

Properties with no street number are grouped with the odd addresses. That detail matters for some common areas, entrance medians and lots in Melbourne that have irrigation but no assigned house number: on the city schedule they share the Wednesday and Saturday days in summer and the Saturday day in winter.

Melbourne runs two versions of the schedule each year. The city defines the daylight saving time period as running from the second Sunday in March until the first Sunday in November, and the Eastern Standard Time period as running from the first Sunday in November until the second Sunday in March. Watering days therefore change on the same weekends that clocks change.

In the Eastern Standard Time months, Melbourne cuts every group to a single day. Homes with odd-numbered addresses and homes with no address may water on Saturdays. Homes with even-numbered addresses may water on Sundays. Nonresidential properties may water on Tuesdays. Each category keeps one of its summer days and drops the other, which halves the permitted number of irrigation days in the cooler half of the year.

On the 2026 calendar, the two-day summer pattern began on Sunday, March 8, and the one-day winter pattern returns on Sunday, November 1, when Melbourne falls back to Eastern Standard Time. Under the winter schedule, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are no longer watering days for any category of Melbourne property.

Two further limits apply on every permitted day. The city schedule states that watering should not take place between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and that no zone should run for more than one hour. A Melbourne sprinkler controller with several zones can run longer than an hour in total, provided each zone stays inside its own one-hour limit and the cycle avoids the midday window.

The restrictions are not limited to customers on a city water meter. According to the City of Melbourne, they apply to private wells and pumps, to ground or surface water and to water from public and private utilities. A Melbourne yard watered from a private well or pumped from a pond is held to the same days and hours as a yard on the municipal system. The single exception the city publishes is reclaimed water, covered in a later section.

The schedule originates with the St. Johns River Water Management District, whose water conservation rules cover Melbourne, and it is also backed by City ordinance, according to the city irrigation page. The district's landscape irrigation provisions are part of its consumptive use rules. Rule 40C-2.042 of the Florida Administrative Code, titled General Permit by Rule, was most recently amended effective December 11, 2025, and lists among its referenced forms a CUP Application for Landscape Irrigation for One Additional Day per Week. The rule record cites section 373.62 of the Florida Statutes among the laws it implements.

That statute, Florida Statute 373.62, governs automatic sprinkler systems statewide, including those in Melbourne. Any person who purchases and installs an automatic landscape irrigation system must properly install, maintain and operate technology that inhibits or interrupts the system during periods of sufficient moisture. A licensed contractor who works on such a system must test each of those devices and repair or replace any that are missing or broken before finishing other work on the system.

Section 373.62 also opens a route around fixed days. Under subsection 7, a water management district such as the St. Johns River district grants a variance from day of the week restrictions for users whose soil moisture sensor control systems are monitored by a qualifying entity, such as a local government, a homeowners' association or a utility. Time of day requirements and water shortage orders still apply to those users. The Melbourne irrigation page, as checked on October 8, 2026, does not mention any such variance.

Reclaimed water is treated wastewater recycled for irrigation and other non-drinking uses. The City of Melbourne reclaimed water page states that reclaimed water is not subject to the year-round restrictions that apply to potable water or groundwater well irrigation systems, and that the city supplies it on a 24 hour, seven day a week, 365 day a year schedule. Reclaimed customers are still asked to use it wisely and follow best practices for irrigation.

Melbourne has distributed reclaimed water for 30 years, and its reclaimed customers recycle an average of 2.2 million gallons a day. The customer list includes both city golf courses, Crane Creek Reserve and Mallards Landing, along with Orlando-Melbourne International Airport, five local parks, two high schools and more than 1,000 commercial and single-family properties. Permitted uses in Melbourne include lawn and landscape irrigation, decorative ponds and fountains, water-cooled air conditioning and construction dust control; it is not used for drinking, filling pools or washing vehicles and driveways.

Connection follows a set process. The city's How to Get Reclaimed Water page limits service to properties with an underground irrigation system and permanently placed sprinkler heads, requires any other irrigation water source to be completely disconnected first, and calls for a cross-connection inspection by the City of Melbourne at connection and periodically afterward. The Melbourne Reclaimed Water Coordinator handles availability questions at 321-608-5120.

The reclaimed water connection page cites studies indicating that 30 to 50 percent of all residential water use is for irrigation. It states that an average of 17 percent can be saved on monthly water bills when reclaimed water replaces potable water for irrigation, which for an average City of Melbourne residential property can mean savings of $30 to $56 a month.

Irrigation also bears on the sewer charge. The city's Sewer Credit page explains that City Code Section 58-243(d) authorizes adjustments to sewer charges in certain cases where excessive water consumption does not enter the sewer system. Water used for irrigation is listed among the causes that do not qualify, together with leaks that drain into the sanitary sewer and negligent or undetermined use. A high Melbourne bill caused by an overrunning sprinkler timer is therefore not eligible for that credit.

Irrigation wells raise one more issue. The city's backflow guidance lists an irrigation or drinking water well on a property, and access to reclaimed water, among its examples of a cross-connection, the condition the Melbourne cross-connection control program exists to manage. Reclaimed water leaks and water line breaks go to the Public Works and Utilities Department at 321-608-5130 during working hours or 321-255-4622 after hours.