What we learned about Cape Coral’s water crisis after a ride along

Water is like liquid gold in Southwest Florida, and some neighborhoods are running low on it.

Parts of Cape Coral are under a once-a-week-watering mandate, but not everyone follows it.

• RELATED: Concern over water shortage in Cape Coral

At night, city code enforcement rides around at night looking for violations.

One of the most common issues code compliance officers are seeing is watering outside the mandated times in the city of Cape Coral.

“During the daytime, there shouldn’t be any active watering taking place,” Scott Irvin, code code compliance officer.

If caught watering during the daytime, a written notice of violation will be left in your front yard.

Irvin told us the proper time to water from 8 to 11:50 p.m., midnight to 4 a.m., and early mornings from 4 to 8 a.m.

All an effort to conserve the city’s water.

“A lot of us take for granted how important our resource of water is. If we abuse it and don’t follow the schedule to manage that resource, we’ll lose it and can’t afford to do that,” Irvin said.

But even with those scheduled times in place, people still don’t follow the rules.

WINK News took a ride-along with Irvin to learn more about some of the common violations he sees so you can avoid them.

“One that residents are not aware of, I find a lot of, is the new sod, but new sod is put down, there’s a specific watering time for that from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. in the morning, six days a week for the first 30 days of establishment,” Irvin said.

We actually did find someone watering their sod outside of the city’s time limits.

“You can’t use oscillating sprinklers or rotating sprinklers, or pulsing sprinklers unattended on; you can only use a nozzle attached to the hose if you’re going to be in the yard watering,” Irvin said.

Using your sprinklers outside the city’s time limits is a violation, but hand watering isn’t.

“We came across a resident that was out using the hose with a nozzle on it, watering some plants in the front yard and said hello to her and complimented him for doing a good job. Overall, we saw really good compliance, so I was happy to see that,” Irvin said.

Another good tip Irvin mentioned is that homeowners should look at their address’s last digit.
For example, if you’re 6099, with 9 being the last digit, it has a specific watering time during the week.

To find out more, you can pull up Cape Coral’s watering schedule online to know your times to set your timer and avoid getting violations.