Why Your Water Bill Exploded and How to Keep Your Trees Alive Anyway
How much water does a mature tree need in a drought? Two to three gallons per inch of trunk diameter, applied slowly out at the dripline, every ten days to two weeks. A 12-inch tree needs roughly 24 to 36 gallons per soak, not per day.
Two things are happening at once in Sachse right now and they are related.
Trees and shrubs are dying all over town, including in yards where somebody has been running the sprinklers faithfully. And people are opening water bills that look like a car payment and calling the city to report a leak.
Both of those have the same cause which is that we are in genuinely historic conditions and almost nobody is watering in a way that matches them.
The conditions, for the record
As of mid-September, Dallas-Fort Worth has gone 60 days without measurable rainfall. We recorded 12 days at or above 100 degrees in September alone, which is a record for the month and 49 triple-digit days for the year, the sixth most on record. Much of North Texas is now in severe to extreme drought.
So this is not you imagining it and it is not your yard doing something unusual. It is the sixth hottest year on record arriving on top of two months with no rain.
Why your bill is so much higher than you expected
Here is the part that shocks people, and it has nothing to do with a leak.
Sachse bills residential water on tiers, and the tiers get steep fast. As of the rates effective October 2025:
Usage | Rate per 1,000 gallons |
|---|---|
Base charge | $19.85 |
0 to 10,000 gallons | $5.90 |
10,001 to 20,000 | $7.88 |
20,001 to 30,000 | $10.23 |
30,001 and up | $12.04 |
That top tier is more than double the first one. Which means the last thousand gallons you use in a month can cost twice what the first thousand did.
Watch what that does to a bill:
Monthly usage | Water portion of your bill |
|---|---|
10,000 gallons | about $79 |
20,000 gallons | about $158 |
30,000 gallons | about $260 |
40,000 gallons | about $380 |
50,000 gallons | about $501 |
Go from 10,000 gallons to 40,000 and you used four times the water. Your bill went up almost five times. That gap is the tiers and it is designed that way on purpose because tiered pricing is how a city discourages heavy irrigation without banning it outright.
So the person who cranked the sprinklers up in July because the grass looked bad is not being punished by a billing error. They crossed into the expensive tiers and stayed there.
The one piece of good news nobody tells you
Your sewer bill is not going up with it.
Sachse calculates residential sewer using winter averaging. The city looks at your usage from November through March, throws out your highest and lowest month, averages the remaining three and uses that number to bill your sewer for the following twelve months.
The logic is sound. Water you put on your lawn does not go into the sanitary sewer so you should not pay sewer charges on it. Most cities in our area do some version of this.
But read it in the other direction because there is a strategy hidden in it. Your winter water use sets your sewer bill for the entire next year. If you leave the irrigation running through a mild December, or fix a running toilet in April instead of January, you are paying for that mistake every month until the following winter. November through March is the window where being careful actually compounds.
Now the part that saves your trees
Here is what most people get wrong, and it is why yards with faithful sprinkler schedules still have dead shrubs.
Sprinklers water grass. They do not water trees. A sprinkler cycle puts down a small amount of water across a broad area and in this heat much of it evaporates or runs off before it goes anywhere. It wets the top inch or two of soil, which is exactly where grass roots live and nowhere near where a mature tree drinks.
Texas A&M Forest Service guidance for drought is specific and it is not what most people are doing:
How much. Two to three gallons per inch of trunk diameter. Measure the trunk at about chest height. A 12-inch trunk wants roughly 24 to 36 gallons per watering.
How often. Every ten days to two weeks for an established tree. Not daily. The goal is to imitate the rain pattern the tree evolved to expect which is a real soaking at intervals, not a daily mist.
Where. Out at the dripline, meaning the edge of the canopy and ideally a little beyond it. Not at the trunk. The feeder roots that actually absorb water are out near the edge of the crown and past it, not hugging the base. Watering the trunk is the single most common mistake and it accomplishes almost nothing.
How. Slowly. A soaker hose laid in a ring at the dripline, a drip zone, or a hose on a trickle that you move every so often. In our clay, water applied fast runs off. Water applied slowly soaks in.
How to check. Push a long screwdriver into the soil. If it will not go six to eight inches in without a fight, the tree needs more water. You may recognize that test from what I wrote about foundations and it is the same test for the same reason: our clay tells you the truth when you probe it.
Mulch. Two to three inches around the tree, kept off the trunk itself. It is the cheapest water conservation you can buy and it reduces evaporation substantially.
Young trees are different. Anything planted in the last couple of years needs water two to three times a week, applied over the original root ball, not out at a dripline it does not have yet.
If you have to choose, choose the trees
This is the most important sentence in this post.
When water is expensive or restricted, water your trees and let the grass go. The Forest Service says it plainly and it is correct. A turfgrass lawn that goes brown is dormant, not dead, and it comes back after a decent rain. A mature tree that dies is gone, and you are not replacing it in your lifetime.
There is a real estate version of that too. A dead mature tree in the front yard is a listing problem twice over, first because the yard looks neglected and second because removal of a large tree is a real expense that a buyer will notice and price. Brown grass in September reads to every North Texas buyer as September. A dead oak reads as something else.
Yes, you can still water. Read the rules carefully.
People assume the restrictions stop them from doing any of this. They mostly do not.
Sachse's April through October schedule assigns even-numbered addresses Thursday and Sunday and odd-numbered addresses Wednesday and Saturday, with irrigation prohibited from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. From November through March it drops to one day a week on your trash day.
But those day limits apply to sprinklers and irrigation systems. Hand-held hoses with a shut-off nozzle, dedicated drip zones and soaker hoses are allowed outside the assigned days, as long as there is no runoff.
Which is to say: the exact method that actually saves a tree is the method that is not limited to two days a week. Confirm the current stage with the city, since restrictions can tighten if a drought emergency is declared but under the normal schedule a soaker hose at the dripline is available to you.
The blackout hours still apply and honestly you want to water early anyway. Less evaporation, more water in the ground.
How to bring the bill down without losing the yard
- Stop watering the lawn like it is June. It is dormant or headed there. Keeping it green right now is the single most expensive thing on your bill.
- Move the water to the trees, using a soaker hose at the dripline on the schedule above. You will use dramatically less water for a far better outcome.
- Water before 10 a.m., ideally before dawn.
- Mulch everything you care about.
- Look at your meter with everything off. If the small dial is moving, you do have a leak, and at Tier 4 pricing a leak is costing you twelve dollars a thousand gallons.
- Check the irrigation heads. A head watering the street at Tier 4 is an expensive way to clean concrete.
- Do not try to fix eight weeks of drought in one weekend. Deep and infrequent. Flooding a tree does not undo the stress and it wastes water at the worst rate you pay.
And while you are out there, look at the soil against your slab. If it has pulled away, that is the other half of this problem, and I wrote about it at the start of this stretch in Water Your Foundation Now.
One more thing about the damage
Drought damage does not finish when the drought does.
The Forest Service points out that secondary insects and diseases increase not only during a drought but for years afterward because a stressed tree stays vulnerable long after the rain returns. The tree you keep alive this fall is the one that still needs attention next spring.
If you are unsure whether a tree is dead or just stressed, scratch a small twig with your thumbnail. Green underneath means it is still alive and worth watering. Brown and brittle all the way through means that branch is gone, though the tree may not be.
Do not take a chainsaw to anything in September. Water it, wait for spring and see what leafs out.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my Sachse water bill so high this summer? Sachse uses tiered water rates that rise steeply with usage, from $5.90 per thousand gallons in the lowest tier to $12.04 above 30,000 gallons. Heavy irrigation pushes a household into the top tiers, where the same amount of water costs roughly twice as much. Going from 10,000 to 40,000 gallons in a month raises the water portion of a bill from about $79 to about $380.
Does summer watering raise my sewer bill too? No. Sachse calculates residential sewer on winter averaging, using November through March consumption with the highest and lowest months dropped. Summer irrigation does not inflate your sewer charge, but your winter usage does set that charge for the following twelve months.
How do you deep water a tree during a drought? Apply two to three gallons per inch of trunk diameter, slowly, out at the dripline rather than at the trunk, every ten days to two weeks. Use a soaker hose or drip line so the water soaks into clay soil instead of running off, and add two to three inches of mulch kept away from the trunk.
If you found this useful, read these next
- Boost Your North Texas Curb Appeal with Native Annuals and Perennials covers what to plant so that the next dry stretch costs you less water and fewer plants.
- Artificial Turf in North Texas: Is It Worth It for Your Yard (and Your Home Value)? is the question a lot of people are asking this month, answered honestly.
If you are thinking about listing this fall and your landscape took a beating, call me before you spend money replacing anything. Some of what looks dead right now is not, and some of what is dead is not worth replacing before a sale. There is a real difference and it is worth fifteen minutes.
Rates cited are Sachse residential rates effective October 2025 and are subject to change. Restrictions vary by city and can tighten during a declared drought emergency, so confirm current rules with your own water provider.
Visit MartenTeam.com or book a consultation.
Jeanie Marten Real Estate 972-414-0719 | MartenTeam.com
