Turf and putting greens in Kitchel Lake at Serratoga Falls.

Item 6 of Article V, headed Astroturf, is a single sentence: “Astroturf is not allowed in lieu of any required front yard sod requirements.” Item 37(A) sets the ratio: “No more than forty percent (40%) of the front yard landscaping shall be non-living materials, unless otherwise approved by the ACC and the Town of Timnath. The same standard shall apply to back yards.” The board of Serratoga Falls Metropolitan District No. 1 adopted that wording for Filing 3 on March 30, 2023, and the Second Filing’s Phase 1 and 2 rules, dated March 1, 2019, carry the same two lines.

Neither item says putting green, and the rules never define non-living materials, so they leave open whether synthetic turf, a flagstone patio or a rock border counts toward the 40%, and how a back yard’s share is measured. Item 37(A) does say where a green goes on the drawing: the plan must show playing areas alongside sod, edging, rock areas, sprinkler systems and landscape lighting. It depends on the committee’s reading, so ask the Architectural Control Committee how it counts turf before a green’s size is fixed; going past 40% takes both the committee and the Town of Timnath.

The two declarations the districts post, one recorded in 2020 for part of the Second Filing and Filing 3’s own from 2023, both give the committee 30 days after everything it asks for is in, and both end the same way: “Failure to approve the plans and specifications within thirty (30) days shall be deemed disapproval.” An owner can appeal a denial to the district board in writing within 10 days, and approved work has to be finished within one year unless the committee grants more time.

The rules want three copies of the plan, at least 11 by 17 inches, drawn at one inch to ten feet with a north arrow and showing what is already there, down to drainage ways, property lines and easements. District No. 1’s request form prices review by project. Rear yards fall under major improvements, at a $150 review fee plus a $2,500 damage deposit returned once a post-installation check finds no damage to district property; minor landscaping is $50 and $100. The committee picks the category and approves nothing until the account is paid. District No. 3’s request form lists a $25 fee for each submittal.

The 2006 consolidated service plan runs part of the districts’ boundary along the high-water line of the Kitchell Reservoir, once called the Kitchell & Moore Reservoir, at elevation 4959.50, and counts about 388.26 acres in all. The rules keep watch on that water: a house’s rear elevation facing the reservoir needs a masonry wrap, and an accessory building may not block another owner’s direct view of the mountains or the lake, so a shed or similar structure beside a green is placed with the neighbors’ outlook in mind. Trumark, building here now, describes 65-foot homesites and a planned clubhouse, water access and open space, and Serratoga Falls Metropolitan District No. 1 reported in July 2026 that the Town approved the site plan for a clubhouse and pool.

Larimer County’s platted-lot map draws 500 numbered lots across the Second Filing, the Third Filing and its replat. Of those, 430 fall between 6,500 and 13,000 square feet, the median is about 8,500, and 136 reach 10,000 or more. On lots that size the rules’ other numbers frame a back yard before style does: a deck may cover no more than 25% of the rear lot and sits at least 5 feet off the property line, and the rules advise keeping sprinkler heads and regularly watered beds 5 feet from the foundation, a strip that needs no water once it is turf, stone or a path.

Filing 3’s declaration bars owners and their contractors from using the open space that abuts a lot as construction access, or for any access other than on foot, without the express written consent of the committee or the district board; the board can repair any damage at the owner’s cost, with fines on top. Where a lot meets common area, the rules require the community fence, four feet high with three rails, an open design that leaves a back yard in view of the common area, and wire mesh for pets can be added with approval.

The back of each lot also carries an easement and irrigation equipment. The rear 10-foot utility easement may sit inside the yard fence but stays open to utility company and district access, and District No. 1’s request form makes the owner pay to replace anything installed in an easement that someone else’s use disturbs. Serratoga Falls Metropolitan District No. 1’s irrigation start-up guide places two irrigation boxes along the rear of each property: a valve box with a blowout port, and a meter box that is district property no homeowner or contractor may tamper with. Turf and a green are laid out around those boxes, and anything built inside the easement strip should be able to come up and go back down.

Grading is the other fixed line. The 2020 declaration defines a lot’s established drainage as the grading plan the Town approved and requires a committee-approved plan before it changes, and the rules add that a drainage engineer’s report may be required. A green’s contours and the base under turf are shaped within that pattern, never across it toward a neighbor.

District No. 1 supplies each lot’s irrigation water through a private, non-potable system with its own watering rules and a separate fee; drinking water comes from ELCO. Established landscapes water three days a week in a four-hour window, 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. or 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. depending on the address, over a season that runs May 1 to October 15. Owners who need extra watering time for new landscaping must ask the district for it, preferably before the work starts, and the water rules allow special permits for watering new sod.

This year showed how thin that supply can run. On April 30, 2026, the district wrote that after a historically dry winter and spring the reservoir was too low to start the master irrigation pumping station, that well water would go first to trees and shrubs, and that broader residential watering was targeted for May 18. District No. 3’s 2024 start-up letter moved its owners to metered billing at $3.92 per 1,000 gallons, with a 93,000-gallon seasonal ceiling, a $250 surcharge beyond it and no more xeriscape discount. The rules still require sprinklers for the front lawn, but a synthetic back yard needs none of that schedule.

Article III of the rules says that where applicable Town of Timnath standards are more restrictive than the rules, the Town’s standards control, and the 40% line names the Town as the second sign-off for going past it. A district approval is never a permit either: District No. 1’s request form says committee approval isn’t approval from the local building or zoning department, and that it is withdrawn if a required permit goes unobtained.

Timnath’s Ordinance No. 28, Series 2025, says no artificial turf may be put in a landscape plan or installed, outside an athletic field the Community Development Director approves, while the same amendment spares individual detached single-family lots from submitting a landscape plan with a building permit. How the Town reads those two provisions for a Kitchel Lake back yard, and whether it would join the committee in allowing more than 40% non-living, is the Town’s call: ask Timnath Planning, then the committee, before the design is final. This is not legal advice.