Hernando County's Watering Restrictions, Explained

September 24, 2026

If you searched for this, you almost certainly want one specific answer: what day can I run my sprinklers right now. Here it is, followed by the detail that explains why it matters more than it might seem.

The schedule, in one table

Hernando County is under a Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) Modified Phase III “Extreme” Water Shortage order, extended through March 31, 2027, as SWFWMD announced on September 22, 2026. It limits every property in the county to one watering day a week, assigned by the last digit of the street address:

No address waters on Saturday or Sunday, regardless of the last digit.

On your one assigned day, irrigation is only allowed during two windows: 12:01 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., or 8:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. A property under one acre may use only one of those two windows. A property one acre or larger may use both. Aesthetic water features (fountains, decorative ponds) are limited to 4 hours of run time regardless of the day, and washing a vehicle is only allowed on your address’s assigned watering day.

What’s exempt

Hand watering, micro-irrigation, and drip irrigation are exempt from the one-day-a-week limit entirely. They can run any day of the week, as long as it is before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m. This is a genuinely useful exemption: if a specific bed or a newly planted area needs more frequent watering than a once-a-week spray cycle allows, converting it to drip irrigation is one of the few ways to legally water more often than the rest of the yard.

Why “Modified Phase III” and why it matters more than past restrictions

SWFWMD’s water shortage orders come in phases, and Phase III (sometimes called “Extreme”) is more restrictive than the Phase I and Phase II orders that preceded it, both in the number of watering days allowed and in how strictly the hours are enforced. The current order applies not just to Hernando County but to all of Citrus, DeSoto, Hardee, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Sarasota, and Sumter counties, plus portions of Charlotte, Highlands, and Lake, so this is a district-wide response to conditions, not a Hernando-specific rule. Hernando County is entirely inside SWFWMD’s boundary, so every address in the county, Spring Hill, Brooksville, Weeki Wachee, Ridge Manor, Hernando Beach, and everywhere in between, falls under the same schedule.

The controller problem this creates

A watering restriction only works if your irrigation controller is actually programmed to match it, and that is where a lot of otherwise-working systems quietly go wrong. A controller set correctly under a previous, less restrictive schedule does not update itself when SWFWMD tightens the order. It keeps running on whatever day and time it was last told to, which means a system that used to be fully compliant can become non-compliant the moment the county’s rule changes, with nothing wrong mechanically and nobody aware anything changed until a neighbor mentions it or a water bill looks off.

We see this constantly: a homeowner calls thinking something broke because the sprinklers came on Tuesday morning when they expected Wednesday, when the real issue is simply an outdated controller program. See our wrong watering day problem page for the specific two-minute check, and know that setting your controller to the current schedule is included in every service visit we do, regardless of what you originally called about.

What happens if a controller’s backup battery has died

There is a second, less obvious way systems drift out of compliance: a controller that loses power during an outage and has no working backup battery can lose its entire program, then default to a factory schedule that has nothing to do with either your old settings or the county’s current rule. Manufacturer guidance for common controller brands (see our Rain Bird brand page) recommends replacing that backup battery every 2 to 3 years specifically to prevent this. It is a cheap, quick thing to check on any system, and worth asking about even if your controller currently seems to be behaving normally.

What this means if you’re dealing with a dry lawn right now

A once-a-week schedule is a real constraint on a lawn, especially on Hernando County’s fast-draining sandy Candler soil, which the county’s own 1977 USDA soil survey describes as excessively drained with low water-holding capacity, meaning it dries out faster than heavier soil types found elsewhere in Florida. Under a tighter watering schedule, getting every gallon to land where it is actually needed matters more than it used to. A head that overshoots onto the driveway, or a zone with a coverage gap at one corner, wastes water that a once-a-week system cannot afford to waste; see Zone Coverage Fix & Adjustment if you suspect that describes your yard.

Where to check for yourself

Hernando County Utilities and SWFWMD both publish and update this schedule directly, and since water shortage orders can change again as conditions do, it is worth checking their pages directly rather than relying on anything printed or memorized from an earlier order. In the meantime, if your system’s program does not match the table above, that is worth fixing regardless of whatever else brought you to this page. See our FAQ for other common questions, or the pricing page for what a repair or reprogram actually costs.