Designing Residential Sprinkler Systems Properly

imageDesigning a residental sprinkler system can't be that hard. It shouldn't be. It isn't. However, time and again we come across home owners who have been led astray with wrong advice provided by mass produced shop manequins. (You know, B.....gs, M....10, Th.....y L..k etc.) Unfortunately these muppets have never had their hands in the dirt installing a system, let alone taken time to find out how the components are designed to work.

Take pop up sprinklers for example. Generally speaking pop up sprinklers are designed to be placed with a "head to head" spacing. That is the spray from one sprinkler head reaches to the next sprinkler head. As a minimum. Another thing, sprinklers (mostly) spray in circles or part circles. That means that a row of pop ups down the middle of the lawn is either not going to cover everything or it will be wasting water with overspray.

Pipe size is also critical. A SMALLER PIPE DOES NOT INCREASE THE PRESSURE. In fact you can't increase the pressure unless you add a pump. (That's what pumps do, by the way). It may seem obvious but we constantly come across cases where 10 or more large sprinklers are installed on a 19mm low density pipe. ("But the guy at the hardware store told me it would work.")

There are many other ways for you to muck it up. Where do the valves go? How do I make it automatic? What size nozzles do I use? How many sprinklers can I run at a time? How do I programme the controller. And so on.

It isn't that hard. And you can do it. First up, take some advice from the guys who design and make the equipment you are putting in. Hunter Industries are one of the biggest names in pop up sprinklers in the world. They have an excellent handbook on sprinkler design which will guide you step by step to a perfect pop up sprinkler design. Alternatively you can measure up your garden/lawn/acreage and bring it (or email it) to us. We can design your system for you, and then give you a quote on the parts, show you how it all goes together and have it boxed and ready to pick up.


Then all you need to think about is picking the right shovel.

Irrigear Goulburn

Author & Editor

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