Sprinkler Advice

[genius]

Hey All,

I am in need of your help once again. I have a 38 year old house with a 10 zone sprinkler system. Most of the heads were corroded copper ones that I assume to be 30+ years old. I started swapping them out with Orbit 4" popups from HD/Lowes. The problem is my sprinkler system does not have head to head coverage but does reach the entire perimeter. The old copper sprinklers diffuesed the water so even at max opening, the water soaked the gound from 2" up to 10' from the head. These new Orbit sprinklers soak the ground at 10 feet but it's dry from 0-6 feet from the sprinkler. I talked to Orbit tech support and they said I needed head to head coverage. Does anyone make a reasonable cost popup sprinkler that diffuses the water from say 0-12 feet? I have googles and googled and am wits end. I got my system working and hate to have to rip it all out or double the amount of heads to get proper coverage.

TIA,

Derek

[JerryM]

That's kinda the way those popup spray heads work - you need to overlap the coverage. They do make popup rotors, and popup impact heads, which would probably do a better job of close coverage. You might try installing one of those just to see what it does. I'm not sure, but I think the GPM requirements for the rotors or impact heads are a lot higher than for the spray heads - you might need to reconfigure your zones anyway to get the flow rate you need for them to operate correctly.

Jerry

[ransley]

Corroded Brass? clean them. I hope you still have them, here they are now 30$ a piece or more and are only make in somewhere like Sumatra, mine are 30 yrs+ old and the plastic junk that I have a few of, I put back in the Brass, they dont stick, they take a wrench and a walking and even mower and car hits. My brass have many different head patterns and Gpm outputs, compare Gpm ratings on the head pop ups, they should be stamped so you can match Gpm output and patterns. Honestly I dont like the plastic ones, they are the only units I have issues with, sticking, but the Sprinkler maintenance co likes them. I never saw a plastic one survive a mower.

[norminn]

I don't recall difference between Orbit or Toro or ? Aren't the heads adjustable? If not, you could have too much pressure. Should water the entire arc. Loads and loads of info here:

[norminn]

[fftt]

I like (& have used for nearly 30 years) Toro 570 Series Pop-ups.

they make 3", 4", 6" and taller pop-ups....

YEARS ago we used Champion brass pop-up heads with brass inserts. The harder water in SoCal tended to foul the spray inserts & the pop- up was pretty short.

You can buy the 570's as "body" only or with spray heads.

If you get the spray heads separately for can choose the spray radius that suits your spacing. (5', 10', 12', 15')

If your current riser locations are 10'...you can use 10' spray heads (blue stripe).

If the spacing is more than 10', use a spray head with a longer throw

12' (brown stripe) 15' (all black)

I use 3" but depending on your lawn species you might want 4" but the bodies are a bit tall.

These Toro's have been very reliable and on my oldest installation (1980) I just recently replaced all the heads.

Depending on your lawn size & layout you could consider RainBird impluse sprinklers; Maxi-Paw or Min-Paw. A minimum set of strategically placed sprinklers can water an entire lawn. Depending on the size of your zone valves and water supply (gpm & pressure) you could run as many as a half dozen sprinklers per zone.

cheers Bob

[genius]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for all the advice and the great links to further my sprinkler education. I recently matched all the heads on the system with Orbit

4" popup dual spray and it seems to be working much better now. I guess I made a LOT of novice mistakes in the past few years. I do need to add a couple more heads, but all in all, it's working well. I have huge pressure at my house and no more than 4 sprinklers per zone. The lines are 1" and my pressure is roughly ~75 PSI.

Thanks again for all the help.

On a side note. My valves are buried in the yard somewhere and not all together. Is there an inexpensive way to find them?

[norminn]

We had that issue at our condo, with four of six buried "somewhere". We dug a hole where the wires exited, took a "sight line" and dug another...cheap ex. in terms of our time. We tried metal detector and stethoscope :o) Also dug up a lot of concrete doughnuts that had been buried for many years.

[beavernation]

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Instead of going through the trouble of tearing out the entire system or adding to it you might want to look into a tractor sprinkler. I've been using one for 3 years now on about an acre of lawn and it's been great. Saved me $5000 over the cheapest quote I got for an in-ground system.

Lawn Sprinkler Systems is where i got mine and I love it! Good luck!

[beavernation]

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Instead of going through the trouble of tearing out the entire system or adding to it you might want to look into a tractor sprinkler. I've been using one for 3 years now on about an acre of lawn and it's been great. Saved me $5000 over the cheapest quote I got for an in-ground system.

Lawn Sprinkler Systems is where i got mine and I love it! Good luck!