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<br />requirement for a given landscape. As it turned out, the locations for the 80 participants were <br />fairly equally distributed between the two groups. <br /> <br />Financial value of home and landscape -- there is possibly a correlation between the financial <br />value of a home and the homeowner's landscape water use. A fairly substantial difference was <br />found for this variable; the average estimated home value for Group 1 participants was <br />$200,000, versus $160,000 for Group 2. <br /> <br />Landscape water requirements -- it would be a reasonable possibility that the average hndscape <br />water requirements between the two groups could differ. For example, people that pay the <br />money necessary to amend their soil (Group 2) may be more likely to install lower water- <br />requiring plants, whether for potential water savings or for environmental ethics. To determine <br />whether or not the two groups differed in that regard, the research assistants made a qualitative <br />assessment of the water requirements for each of the 80 landscapes. (A description of the <br />ranking categories is included as Attachment E.) After these assessments were made, it was <br />determined that there was no significant difference between the average landscape water <br />requirements for the two groups; 3.83 for Group 1 and 3.78 for Group 2. <br /> <br />Per person, daily indoor water use - the daily water use, in gallons per person per day, should <br />be a reasonable indicator of a person's proclivity towards water conservation. It would be <br />reasonable to speculate th_~t the Group I participants are more conscientious with their water use, <br />since they went to the expense of amending the soil for potential water savings. If that were the <br />case, and if they ended up actually using less water for landscape irrigation, it could be argued <br />that the lowered water use was due to their more conserving habits, rather than a specific benefit <br />of amending the soil. However, if the Group I participants are in fact more conscientious with <br />their water use, you would expect them to have a lower average indoor water use. As it turns <br />out, the two groups had approximately equal average indoor water use; 69.2 gallons per capita <br />per day for Group 1 and 69.8 gallons per capita per day for Group 2. This is consistent with <br />the above result of approximately equal landscape water requirement rankings, substantiating that <br />the two groups do not differ in their water conservation " mindedness " . <br /> <br />Irrigated area -- the measured and calculated average irrigated area for Group 1 was 4727 square <br />feet, and for Group 2 it was 4055 square feet. It is somewhat curious that it would differ this <br />much between the two groups, but since irrigation depths were compared, rather than volumes, <br />this isn't suspected as a being a particularly relevant variable. <br /> <br />Several other miscellaneous and potentially-useful statistics were gathered from the study, including: <br /> <br />Approximately 75% of the participants installed automatic irrigation systems as part of the initial <br />installation of their landscape. (80% for Group I and 70% for Group 2.) This is likely to be <br />representative of the entire group of recent, new homeowners in Fort Collins. <br /> <br />About 75 % of new homeowners in Fort Collins amend their soil with composted manure. <br /> <br />5 <br />