Sprinkler Systems Do It Yourself - Should You?

Sprinkler systems do it yourself at first sounds like a good idea. I mean hey, what’s involved? You run some pipes, connect some sprinklers, Bada-Boom, Bada-Bing, no problem!

WRONG.

Without knowing how to properly configure your lawn irrigation you will end up over watering some parts of the landscape and under watering others. What you will end up with is weeds and dead plants. There is more involved than just “throwing water” around your yard. What you are striving for with any irrigation system is one thing: equal precipitation. Equal precipitation means that areas of your yard, and the specific plants in that area receive the same amount of water based on need.

Here is an example. Let’s say zone (area) #1 consists of St. Augustine grass surrounded by Swedish Ivy. The K-Factor for St. Augustine grass is different than the landscape co-efficient for Swedish Ivy. Yet, the sprinklers must be set for the St. Augustine because it uses more water. What happens? Lots of weeds in the drought tolerant Swedish Ivy beds. And it can get worse. What if the Swedish Ivy is under some trees and the grass is in the sun? You could actually drown the Ivy trying to sufficiently water the turf.

So, how do you deal with these different types of plants needing different amounts of water? Proper sprinkler system design. It a nutshell this means more zones or separately irrigated areas. Hydo-zoning means calculating the water need based on plant type and conditions (sun or shade) and varying soil conditions. Bada-Boom Bada-Bing it ain’t.

After determining your hyro-zone requirement, we now get into the sprinkler systems head type and friction factor (pipe sizing) limitations and pressure fluctuations. All of these factors affect the amount of water applied to your specific landscape requirements.

Sprinkler system design cannot be learned in an article, but let’s cover some basics.
1. Do not mix sprinkler head types. This means that spray heads and rotors are always on separate zones, because they deliver vastly different amounts of water over there given area (precipitation rate).
2. Separate shrubs, trees and turf into different zones because their water requirements are different.
3. Separate shaded areas from full sun areas. This should be obvious, but for some reason, installers will put full sun turf on the same zone as shaded shrubs. Drives me nuts when I see it!

If you don’t want to learn a pipe sizing chart, and make it easy on yourself, just do this. Use all one inch PVC pipe for your entire system, as long as you keep the flow below 15 gallons per minute. This way you have only two types of fittings to buy. 1” T’s, 90’s etc., and 1x1/2” reducer bushing to go to the ½’ pipe or swing joints for the sprinkler heads. Place your sprinkler heads on Funny Pipe or Flex Hose (ask your hardware guy, he will explain it further).

In the end, the most important aspect of sprinkler systems do it yourself is the design. For more info just go to sprinkler systems do it yourself for more info.