Short answer: two days a week, and which two depends on whether your house number is odd or even. Nobody waters Monday, Tuesday or Friday. Nobody irrigates between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on any day. Here is the whole picture, including the exceptions that actually apply to real properties.
The basic schedule
| Your address ends in | You may water | Allowed hours |
|---|---|---|
| Odd number (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) | Wednesday and/or Saturday | Before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. |
| Even number (0, 2, 4, 6, 8) | Thursday and/or Sunday | Before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. |
| No street address, or mixed odd/even (many condos, HOAs, multi-family) | Thursday and/or Sunday | Before 10 a.m. or after 4 p.m. |
Monday, Tuesday and Friday are dry days for everyone. "And/or" means you may use both of your days or just one — it is a ceiling, not a requirement.
Why two days when the state rule says three?
This trips people up, so it is worth explaining. The South Florida Water Management District's year-round rule puts Broward in a three-day group by default. But state rules allow a local government to adopt stricter measures, and Broward County has done exactly that — a countywide two-day ordinance that applies in every municipality in the county. So if you find a page on sfwmd.gov showing three days for Broward, that is the district default, not the rule you live under. The operative schedule is the county's.
Does a private well exempt me?
No. This is the most common misunderstanding we encounter, and it comes up on nearly every well-system service call. The rule applies to landscape irrigation from all water sources, explicitly including private wells and private connections to canals, lakes and ponds. The reasoning is that surface water and groundwater in South Florida are the same connected system — keeping water in the canals is part of what holds back saltwater intrusion from the coast. A well changes your water bill. It does not change your watering days.
What is actually exempt
- Low-volume irrigation — drip, bubblers, micro-jets applying water directly to root zones. Allowed any time. This is worth knowing: converting your planting beds from spray to drip removes them from the restriction entirely, and the plants usually do better on it.
- Hand watering with a hose that has an automatic shut-off nozzle. Any time.
- Water from cisterns and rain barrels. Any time.
- Reclaimed or reuse water. Any day — but still not between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. If you are on Pompano Beach's OASIS system, this is you.
- System maintenance and testing. Once a week, maximum ten minutes per zone.
- New landscaping, on a graduated 90-day schedule (below).
Newly installed sod and landscaping
| Period | Days you may water |
|---|---|
| Day of installation | One unrestricted watering |
| Days 1–30 | Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday (everything but Friday) |
| Days 31–90 | Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday |
This allowance applies only to zones where more than half the area is new material. If you have patched in a small area, hand-water the new plants individually rather than running the whole zone on the expanded schedule. Sunrise sets its own tighter hours for new sod — before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m.
City-by-city notes
| City | Worth knowing |
|---|---|
| Fort Lauderdale | No separate city schedule published; the county rule governs. Water comes from the city's Fiveash plant. |
| Plantation | Follows the county ordinance. City suggests midnight–7 a.m. or 4 p.m.–midnight as the most effective windows. Conservation and rebate line: 954-513-3518. |
| Davie | Has its own ordinance, Town Code Chapter 25-32. Permitted hours stated as midnight–10 a.m. and 4 p.m.–midnight. Part of west Davie is served by Sunrise. |
| Sunrise | Strictest in the county. Friday is an explicit dry day. Fines up to $250. Separate new-sod rules. Violations: 954-572-2344. |
| Weston | Buys water from Sunrise. Publishes a formal City agreement process for drawing lake water — one of the few that does. Lake-fed systems exist countywide and are not exempt from the day restrictions anywhere. |
| Coral Springs | Four different water districts by address. Confirm which one serves you before calling about pressure or rebates. |
| Pompano Beach | OASIS reuse customers may water any day (still not 10 a.m.–4 p.m.). Note: an outdated 3-day PDF schedule still circulates — disregard it. Code Enforcement: 954-786-4361. |
| Deerfield Beach | County rule applies. Mixed-address condo properties follow the even schedule. |
| Wilton Manors | County rule applies. Water supplied from Fort Lauderdale's Fiveash plant. |
| Oakland Park | County rule applies. City is split between Oakland Park water (954-630-4430) and Broward County Water (954-831-3250). |
| Boca Raton (Palm Beach County) | Not Broward — three days a week, not two. Odd addresses Monday, Wednesday, Saturday; even addresses Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday. Still no watering 10 a.m.–4 p.m., and no watering Friday. City caps a single irrigation event at four hours. Conservation line: 561-338-7306. |
If you are in Boca Raton, this page is not your rule
Everything above is Broward County. Cross the county line into Boca Raton and you are in Palm Beach County, which stayed on the district's three-day schedule instead of adopting a stricter two-day one. Odd-numbered addresses water Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. Even-numbered addresses water Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. The 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. prohibition still applies, nobody waters Friday, and Boca adds its own cap of four hours per irrigation event on parcels under five acres. Confirm your own address with the city at 561-338-7306 — we will confirm it on site as well.
What happens if you violate it
Enforcement runs through local code enforcement or police, and penalties vary by municipality. Sunrise publishes fines of up to $250. Countywide, first-offense residential fines have historically fallen in the range of roughly $25 to $125, though amounts change and are set locally — check with your city for current figures. In practice most cities warn first.
Your rain sensor is not optional
Florida Statute 373.62 requires anyone operating an automatic irrigation system to install, maintain and operate a device that shuts the system off during sufficient moisture. Most rain sensors we find in the field are dead — the common expanding-disk type needs its disks replaced at least every two years. Test yours annually by spraying it and confirming the system stops. Set the threshold as low as it goes, an eighth of an inch on most units.
How much water does a Broward lawn actually need?
UF/IFAS deliberately does not publish a fixed inches-per-week number, and that is the right call. The recommendation is to apply half an inch to three quarters of an inch per watering, and only when the lawn shows wilt — blades folding, a blue-gray cast, or footprints staying visible after you walk across it. Change the frequency with the season, not the amount.
There is a South Florida wrinkle. UF/IFAS notes that many soils here are too shallow to hold three quarters of an inch, because there is limestone caprock a foot or two down. On a thin-soil Broward lot, a long single cycle partly drains straight past the roots. Two shorter cycles on the same allowed day deliver far more usable water than one long one. That is the opposite of the deep-and-infrequent advice on most national gardening sites, and it is why generic guidance underperforms here.
One more thing worth saying plainly: about seventy percent of our annual rainfall arrives between mid-May and mid-October, and by June the water table is often within a foot of the surface. Irrigating a soil profile that is already full is not watering, it is runoff. Controllers left on a summer schedule through the wet season are the single largest source of wasted water in this county.