You really need to put out cups / cans and measure the amount of water your irrigation system sprays per zone.
St Augustine grass needs 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week as a minimum.
It’s best to spread this amount out over two days watering cycles. In the heat of the summer you might need to add a third day and put down an additional 1/2”.
It’s also a good idea to pause your watering cycles so you don’t oversaturate the soil and have a lot off runoff. So have different start times on the same zone….give it about a half to an hour break. Hopefully I explained that right.
Starting at 3 AM is good. You don’t want water sitting on your grass blades for too long as it promotes fungal growth. Watering during the late morning / day is no good as more of the water will be lost to evaporation than what reaches the roots.
Best not to ask how long others are watering. To many variables……for example, I have low flow irrigation heads on a west facing lawn in sandy soil. I water for 80 minutes twice a week. In the summer, I add another 40 minutes to that. My partially shaded side lawn gets half that amount.
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