Expert Irrigation
Fort Lauderdale runs its own water system out of the Fiveash treatment plant, which supplies roughly 176,000 residents here plus six neighboring municipalities. If you are on city water, that is where it comes from. Plenty of homes east of I-95, though, still irrigate from a shallow private well, and in this city that raises a question worth taking seriously.
Saltwater intrusion is a real issue on this side of the county
The saltwater front under coastal Broward moved as much as half a mile inland between 1945 and 1993, and monitoring near Fort Lauderdale's Peele Dixie wellfield still shows landward movement. A shallow irrigation well that produced clean, fresh water when the house was built is not guaranteed to be producing it now. Irrigation water should stay under about 70 ppm chloride. Past that you get leaf burn on ornamentals, decline in St. Augustine that looks like disease, and accelerated corrosion inside pumps and brass valve bodies. If your landscape is failing and nobody can tell you why, testing the well's chloride and conductivity is a cheap first step.
Salt air on the equipment itself
Barrier island properties, Las Olas Isles, Rio Vista and the waterfront neighborhoods put irrigation hardware in a genuinely corrosive environment. Pump housings, pressure switches, controller enclosures, backflow assemblies and brass fittings all age faster here than they do six miles west. Where it matters we specify 316 stainless over 304, keep as much of the run in PVC as possible, use waterproof gel-filled wire connectors, and get pumps and controllers shaded and up off the ground.
Older systems in the historic neighborhoods
Victoria Park, Colee Hammock and the pre-war sections have irrigation that has been patched by a lot of different hands over a lot of years. Mixed head types on a single valve, laterals run at inconsistent depths, and undocumented valve boxes buried under bed material are all normal here. We map what is actually there before quoting, because on these properties the surprise is usually underground.
Your watering days
The City of Fort Lauderdale does not publish its own irrigation schedule — the binding rule is Broward County's, which applies in every municipality. Odd-numbered addresses water Wednesday and/or Saturday. Even-numbered addresses water Thursday and/or Sunday. No irrigation between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., and no watering at all on Monday, Tuesday or Friday. Private wells are not exempt.