I've been reading a little on it, and the way I want to install it seems pretty easy. I have a small flower bed, which needs water everyday and isn't getting it. It's getting water every 2-3 days right no. It's only about 20' x 5'. Thinking it would be easy to install some PVC piping about 6" in the ground, with some flexible arms to the sprinkler head (would only need
3-4 maybe?), and then manually connecting it to the close-by faucet when watering. I guess the connection could some time of flexible hose with threading. Does this seem easy/straigt-forward? Am I missing anything in the thought process? Would I still need to measure PSI and GPM for 3-4 heads in this small area? Would I need a backflow prevention mechanism for connection to an above-ground faucet? Thanks for the help. You can call me lazy, but getting home at night-time after a long day's work (6 days a week), it's definitely a "chore" to water this flower bed.
Since you're asking this question NOW, I have to assume that you're located somewhere where freezing of the pipes is not an issue. If not, you might want to go deeper than 6 inches.
Otherwise, seems simple enough to me. Some 1/2 inch PVC, put threaded T's with cut-off risers where you want the sprinkler heads. You should be able to find a PVC adapter to go from your PVC pipe to either male or female garden hose threads, run a length of garden hose from there to your hose bib. Put a Y-adapter on your hose bib so you can leave your sprinklers connected and still use a hose. Even lazier, I have seen (but never used) battery powered hose timers - you connect the timer to the hose bib, and the hose to the timer - I assume you can set them for frequency and duration - not sure what happens when the batteries die, probably stops watering.
Small circuit like that, you probably don't need to worry too much about PSI and GPM. One of my circuits at home runs 6 popup heads, combination of full-circle half-circle and quarter circle through 3/4 inch pipe, think my pressure is something like 55-60 PSI, don't remember, it's been a while. It's not rocket science, you just need to make sure you can deliver the required total flow rate of the sprinkler heads at your delivery pressure. Toro and RainBird both print little planning guides you can pick up at Home Depot - they have a chart that shows how many GPM can be delivered through a given size pipe at a given pressure - just make sure the total GPM of all your sprinkler heads is below that number. Not a big deal to measure the pressure, I bought a small pressure gauge when I did my sprinklers, think it cost 6 or 7 bucks. Or maybe a neighbor has one you can borrow, it's something you use once and then put away in the garage.
You definitely want some kind of backflow prevention on there to protect your drinking water, wouldn't want to suck garden water with fertilizer or insecticide back into the house, would you? In many localities, code requires backflow diverters on outside faucets. If you don't have one, you can buy a diverter that screws on to your hose bib, don't know what they cost, but they look like they shouldn't be more that $5 or so.
We did something similar to water plants on our patio :o) Check out the irrigation dept at your favorite store (or the internet). We buried a length of microtubing just to get it from the faucet to the patio. The lawn edger sliced it once, but easty to splice in a new section. We don't use the microsprayers, but tried them once in another location. Microsprayers seem to clog easily. We put a "Y" connector on the hose bib, then one connector with adapter for the microtubing. Can do the same with pvc, but your relatively small garden area might do better with a soaker hose and some mulch.
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