How long and how often should I water my west Texas front yard?

Question

We just recently moved to a new house, and we are very new to maintaining our yard. We have automatic sprinklers, but we are not quite sure how often and how long they should be watering our front yard.

Is there a specific metric to do this, like every x minutes based on square inch and temperature? We live in west Texas. Hot Weather.

Also, we have 4 sprinklers, with one sprinkler positioned on each corner.

Here is what our front yard looks like:

Right now we set it up to Wed, Fri, Sun, 10 minutes in the morning but we are unsure if it is too much, too little, or normal.

Answer 1

This may turn out to be an unpopular answer, but your best bet is to replace that grass with some dry climate shrubs. Adding some dry climate shrubs but not removing all the grass is another option. The shrubs should actually help contain moisture near to their bases.

Watering lawns is going the way of the dinosaurs, and if you are uncomfortable with it being brown, then I would suggest getting rid of it. I see you have some nice rock landscaping, combining rocks with shrubby natives is your best bet.

Another possible solution would to just let it turn brown. Grass goes dormant, and returns to life with the rains. This may not work for you if you have a water-loving introduced grass.

The answer you are probably hoping to hear depends on the type of grass. I don't know what grasses they plant in Texas lawns, but if you don't know or can't find out what type it is then you are left with some trial and error. Slowly taper off your application of water until the lawn gets unacceptable, then peg your required watering from there.