Richmond Hill Water Restrictions 2026

Richmond Hill operates a mandatory odd/even watering schedule from June 15 to September 30, with permitted hours between midnight and 6 a.m. and between 7 and 10 p.m.

Two things make Richmond Hill unusual in York Region. Its season starts latest — June 15, a month after Vaughan and Aurora. And it is the only municipality in the region that opens an overnight window: from midnight to 6 a.m., you may legally water while the rest of York Region cannot.

As everywhere in the region, this is a permanent seasonal by-law, not a drought measure. It runs on the calendar.

Your assigned watering schedule

Your address	Watering dates	Permitted hours
Odd-numbered	Odd calendar dates	Midnight-6 a.m. and 7-10 p.m.
Even-numbered	Even calendar dates	Midnight-6 a.m. and 7-10 p.m.

Nine permitted hours a day on alternate days is a comfortable allowance — but the shape of it matters more than the total. The midnight-to-6 a.m. block is designed for automatic in-ground systems, which can run unattended at 3 a.m. when nobody is awake and the distribution network is at its quietest. The 7-10 p.m. block is the practical one for people watering by hand after work.

Overnight watering has one horticultural caveat worth knowing. Grass that stays wet all night is more prone to fungal disease than grass watered in the early morning, because the foliage never dries. If your system can run at 4 or 5 a.m. rather than at midnight, the lawn will thank you — the water still goes down before the heat, but the leaf dries after sunrise.

Fines and enforcement

Richmond Hill enforces its outdoor water use by-law through municipal by-law services, on a complaint-driven basis. The City does not publish a standing set fine that we can confirm from a municipal source. The figures repeated on landscaping and aggregator sites do not trace back to Richmond Hill itself, so we are not going to state one — ask the City if you need the current number before deciding whether to risk it.

What is worth saying is that an overnight window changes the enforcement picture. Most watering violations are reported by neighbours who see a sprinkler running; at 3 a.m., very few people are watching. In practice the violations that get reported in Richmond Hill are evening ones — systems running before 7 p.m. or after 10 p.m., when the street is awake.

Where Richmond Hill’s water comes from

Richmond Hill receives Lake Ontario water wholesaled through York Region, purchased from Toronto and Peel and pumped inland. But its geography is the most distinctive of the five large York municipalities, and it explains the by-law’s shape.

The town straddles the Oak Ridges Moraine, the ridge of glacial sand and gravel running east-west across south-central Ontario. The moraine is the recharge area for a great many of southern Ontario’s aquifers and the headwaters of rivers draining both south to Lake Ontario and north to Lake Simcoe. It is also high ground: Richmond Hill sits at roughly 250 metres above sea level, well above the lakeshore plants that supply it.

Elevation is the constraint. Every litre delivered to Richmond Hill is lifted more than 200 metres through a chain of pumping stations and pressure zones. Pumping is the expensive, capacity-limited step, and it is at its most strained during a hot evening when demand across the whole inland network peaks at once. Shifting irrigation into an overnight window is a direct answer to that: the same volume of water, moved when the pumps have room.

Living on the moraine

The Oak Ridges Moraine is protected under provincial legislation, and the reason is groundwater rather than scenery. Rain and snowmelt soak into its porous sand and gravel and recharge aquifers that supply wells across a wide area, so what happens on the surface of the moraine matters to water quality a long way from Richmond Hill.

For a resident, two implications follow. Soils on the moraine drain fast — sandy ground holds far less moisture than the clay that dominates much of the surrounding region, which means a Richmond Hill lawn genuinely dries out faster than one in Markham on the same weather. That is frustrating under an alternate-day schedule, and it makes the case for deeper, less frequent watering rather than short daily doses.

It also makes mulch unusually valuable here. A 5-7 cm layer over beds slows evaporation from soil that is already prone to drying, and does more on sandy ground than it would on clay.

Permanent by-law or drought response?

Ontario has both kinds of rule, and they behave in opposite ways.

The by-law — Richmond Hill’s June 15 to September 30 odd/even schedule — is calendar-driven. It applies in a wet July exactly as it does in a dry one, because its purpose is to manage the peak load on pumping and distribution infrastructure, which is a fixed engineering constraint.

The drought response is condition-driven. Under the provincial Low Water Response programme, conservation authorities monitor streamflow and precipitation and declare Level 1 (voluntary 10% reduction), Level 2 (mandatory 20%) or Level 3 (mandatory restrictions on all non-essential use). These are declared when conditions deteriorate and lifted when they recover.

The two stack. A Level 2 declaration would sit on top of the odd/even schedule, not replace it.

Condominium rules during water restrictions

The protection Ontario condominium owners have here is weaker than in British Columbia, and pretending otherwise would not help anyone.

B.C.’s section 121 of the Strata Property Act provides that a strata bylaw is not enforceable to the extent it contravenes another enactment or law. Ontario has no equivalent express statutory provision. Condominium corporations operate under the Condominium Act, 1998; a corporate rule cannot lawfully require an owner to commit a by-law offence, but enforcing that principle is slower and less certain than it would be in Vancouver.

Richmond Hill has a substantial condominium stock, much of it with corporation-managed landscaping. The overnight window actually helps here: a corporation-owned controller set to run between midnight and 6 a.m. on the correct parity is compliant and invisible, and removes most of the friction that arises when residents see contractors watering at the wrong time. Ask your board in writing to confirm the controller is set to the building’s address parity and inside a permitted block.

General information only, not legal advice. Strata and condo disputes are handled by the Condominium Authority Tribunal.

What's exempt from Richmond Hill's restrictions

Richmond Hill provides a one-month grace period for newly laid sod and new seed, in line with most of York Region.

Hand watering with a can or a shut-off nozzle covers containers, new plantings and vegetable beds without the schedule getting in the way. Drip irrigation and soaker hoses are the right tool for beds and hedging on this soil in particular — on fast-draining moraine sand, overhead spray loses more to evaporation and reaches the root zone less efficiently than a slow soak does.

Reporting a violation, and what actually happens

Enforcement across York Region is complaint-driven rather than patrol-driven, which means the system depends on residents reporting what they see. It is worth understanding what that process is and is not.

A report goes to municipal by-law services. An officer may attend, and if a violation is observed, a notice or a ticket follows. What an officer generally cannot do is act on a report of something that happened yesterday — enforcement usually requires observation, which is why persistent violations get dealt with and one-off ones frequently do not.

This has a specific consequence in Richmond Hill that does not apply elsewhere in the region. Because the by-law permits watering from midnight to 6 a.m., a large share of legitimate watering happens when nobody is awake to see it — and a large share of illegitimate watering happens then too, unobserved. In practice the violations that get reported here are the visible evening ones: systems running before 7 p.m. or after 10 p.m., when the street is occupied.

If you are reporting, the useful details are the address, the date, the time and what was running — a lawn sprinkler is a different matter from someone hand-watering a container. If you are on the receiving end of a report, the usual outcome for a first, genuine mistake is a notice rather than a penalty, though nothing entitles you to that.

The more constructive framing is that most violations in a municipality like this are not defiance. They are automatic irrigation controllers running a programme somebody set two summers ago and has not opened since. A controller that waters daily at 6 p.m. is in breach every second day, indefinitely, and its owner has no idea. Before reporting a neighbour, it is worth considering whether a conversation would fix it faster than a complaint — and before assuming you are compliant, it is worth opening your own controller.

Frequently asked questions

When can I water in Richmond Hill?

Between midnight and 6 a.m. and between 7 and 10 p.m., on your assigned odd or even date, from June 15 to September 30.

Is Richmond Hill really the only place with an overnight window?

Among York Region’s municipalities, yes — the midnight-to-6 a.m. block is unique to Richmond Hill. Neighbouring towns confine watering to morning and evening blocks.

Why does the season start so late?

June 15 is the latest start in York Region — a month after Vaughan and Aurora. The by-law is set locally by each municipality, which is why the seasons differ across the region despite the shared odd/even principle.

Should I water at midnight or at 5 a.m.?

Both are permitted, but 5 a.m. is better for the lawn. Grass left wet all night is more prone to fungal disease; watering closer to dawn lets the foliage dry after sunrise.

What is the fine?

Richmond Hill does not publish a set fine we can verify from a municipal source, and the amounts circulating online do not trace to the City. Off-schedule watering is a ticketable offence — contact Richmond Hill for the current figure.

Why does my lawn dry out faster than my friend’s in Markham?

Richmond Hill straddles the Oak Ridges Moraine, and moraine soils are sandy and fast-draining. They hold considerably less moisture than the clay soils common elsewhere in the region under identical weather.

Can my condo corporation require a green lawn?

A corporate rule cannot require you to commit a by-law offence, but Ontario lacks British Columbia’s statutory protection and tribunal precedent on this point. Put any dispute in writing and ask the board to name the permitted date and window. This is general information, not legal advice; strata and condo disputes are handled by the Condominium Authority Tribunal.

Does rain change the schedule?

No. This is a fixed-calendar by-law addressing pumping and distribution capacity, not a drought measure, so it applies regardless of rainfall.