Artificial lawn?

[XRchic]

Given the drought in this country at the moment, and the severe water restrictions, has anyone considered replacing their current lawn with fake lawn? Or building a new house with fake lawn?

We have quite a lot of lawn on our reasonably large block. It is Santa-Anna Couch which is quite drought resistant, but it still gets dry when not watered at all and then it gets really prickly and unpleasant - and very dead looking.

Here in Adelaide, we can only water with a trigger nozzle for 3 hours, once a week (Sunday evening between 5pm and 8pm for us I think). That doesnt go far if we want to keep our plants and fruit trees alive over summer with large lawns to water as well.

My thinking is that I would almost rather have really nice fake lawn than dead and prickly real lawn. That way my kids can actually play on it. I wouldnt have to water it at all, or weed it, fertilise it or mow it.

There are some new estates in our area that have new houses popping up every day nearly. And so many of them have the fake lawn out the front! It looks suprisingly good too - some of them I didnt realise it was fake!

Here is a link to some pics of various yards with fake lawn:

http://www.prograss.com.au/?gclid=CL...FQROagodYymfcw

The only thing I cant find is how much it costs, approximately. The websites dont say.

Would anyone else here consider it or would you keep the dead lawn?