The Christchurch City Council will not introduce water restrictions yet, but is advising people to only water their gardens with hand-held hoses and watering cans.

Christchurch gardeners have been given a reprieve from water restrictions even though residents did not heed calls to conserve water during the weekend.

The city has now been without rain for a record-breaking 46 days. The previous 45-day record dry spell was set in 1954.

No rain was expected on Monday, but MetService was predicting rain for Tuesday and Wednesday, when temperatures would drop to 20 degrees Celsius.

The Christchurch City Council decided on Monday to hold off on introducing citywide water restrictions, because of that predicted rain and cooler temperatures.

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This is despite Christchurch residents ignoring calls to conserve water during the weekend.

The city used more than 506 million litres of water over the weekend, which was slightly more than the previous weekend when Christchurch, which was the most used since January 2009.

"Our pumps and other plant were operating pretty much at capacity 24 hours a day," council three waters and waste technical manager Tim Drennan said.

"If consumption was much higher we'd start to see pressure falling in some areas as we struggle to cope. This, of course, is an inconvenience for people and is a serious concern for our ability to meet any firefighting requirements."

Drennan said the predicted rain and cooler weather would provide some relief, but was not a solution and the council was still asking people to conserve water.

"Summer is a long way from over and all it takes is a return to the hot days we've had and we're back in the same situation."

The council advised people to only water their garden before 6am or after 9pm and to use a trigger gun nozzle or a watering can so they only targeted the plants that really needed it.

"We'd also encourage people not to water their lawns or their grass berms."