Turf and putting greens in Owl Lake Estates.

Section 6.14 of the Declaration of Covenants reads in full: “After construction of the dwelling has been completed on each lot, the owner(s) shall promptly plant and maintain appropriate ground cover on the lot. Ground shall not be permitted to remain bare on any lot except for areas being used for gardens. No Poplar trees shall be permitted.” Artificial turf, synthetic grass and putting greens appear nowhere in the declaration, the members’ January 13, 2010 amendments, the bylaws or the ACC’s project form.

The documents draw the review line in different places. Section 5.05 requires the committee’s approval before a structure goes up or a structure’s exterior changes, and the ACC’s own page lists new homes, additions, outbuildings and fences. The HOA’s About page reaches further, sending “improvements or changes to the exterior of your home” to the committee before work begins. It depends on how the ACC reads those lines, so ask the ACC chair before any turf is ordered; the committee’s page recommends that conversation before any submission.

The committee’s resource page already lists xeriscape guides and the Town’s Lawn Replacement Program. A scaled plan that marks turf, planting beds, gardens and any green puts the ground-cover question on paper for the committee instead of leaving it to a site visit.

Section 6.01 holds every owner to the Firestone Municipal Code as well as the covenants: “Whenever a conflict exists between the two, the more restrictive provisions shall apply.” That makes the Town’s turf rules a covenant duty on every Owl Lake lot too: a permit before installation, and a 1.75- to 3-inch pile with at least 70 ounces of face weight. Nothing in that code is written for a short putting surface; the Firestone putting-green page covers what to ask Planning.

Order matters. The ACC’s project form, last revised June 2025, advises committee approval before requesting a Town permit, gives the committee up to 30 days and says answers usually come in 1 to 2 weeks. Its boxes cover homes, additions, garages and outbuildings, and fences; turf and putting greens have no box of their own beyond Other. At the May 30, 2026 annual meeting the chair put one step ahead of both: confirm the project is allowed by Town rules before applying to the ACC.

Section 5.07 lets a structure go ahead without further approval if the committee hasn’t acted within 30 days of a complete submission. That clause speaks of structures, and a turf lawn may not be one, so get the committee’s answer in writing.

The lake is the neighborhood’s reservoir: the covenants dedicate a perpetual right to use it for irrigation water storage, and the HOA pumps its untreated, non-potable water through pipes to the common areas and the homes. The water comes off the Coal Ridge Ditch through the Section 18 lateral. The HOA owns 11 shares of New Coal Ridge Ditch water and shares responsibility for the main and lateral ditches, and their scheduling, with Saddleback Golf Course. Its 2020 water notice put leases at 60 to 70 percent of an average season’s supply.

The lake also loses water on its own. It isn’t engineered, and CSU Extension told the HOA to expect about 1 to 3 inches of evaporation a week. By the HOA’s own arithmetic, a lake filled to roughly 7 feet at the end of one season is basically dry when the next watering season begins. The HOA sums up the system as supplemental, with “no guarantee of water.”

In April the HOA told owners to plan for little to no lake water this season. It then leased restricted water that cannot be stored. By September 1 use was outrunning supply, no more water could be leased for the year, and the ditch rider’s word was that the ditch could stop at any moment.

Lake watering runs 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. on set days for even and odd addresses, no more than 20 minutes a zone, and the HOA says it will be lenient about brown and stressed lawns. The fallback is the Town tap, which the HOA warns can be cost prohibitive, and Town customers are under Firestone’s Stage 1 restrictions. A system tied to both the tap and the lake needs an RP or RPZ backflow assembly tested every year.

A lawn zone turned into turf or a putting green no longer needs its 20-minute turns on the lake schedule, and the trees and beds around it keep theirs.

The two recorded plats split Owl Lake Estates into 26 lots: 16 in the 1996 first filing, from 1.022 to 1.868 acres, and 10 in the 1998 second filing, from 1.207 to 4.396 acres. The first filing also sets aside the 4.619-acre Tract A as HOA open space, and the HOA’s common areas take in the native, partly landscaped ground around the lake.

Houses stand at least 25 feet from the lot lines under Section 6.02, and the plat marks easements on the lots for drainage, gas and oil lines, irrigation, landscaping and utilities, with ditch users and utility companies keeping the right to reach them. Find them on your lot’s plat before a green or a turf panel is drawn over one. Firestone adds its own margin: 3 feet of living landscape between artificial turf and any property line.

Fences frame the design. A lot’s perimeter can take only a wooden or white vinyl pole fence up to 42 inches, interior or privacy fences may reach 6 feet in the same materials, and since the 2010 amendment every fence needs the committee’s approval first. Fence in a dog run or screen a green with a fence, and that fence goes to the ACC whatever the committee makes of the turf.