Has anyone installed their own lawn sprinkler system or have any links to useful information about doing so.

I have no lawn right now and have just had the top soil hauled in so I figure if I do this now would be the best time.

Also if anyone has any new lawn planting info that would be good too.

Are you in the SE of the UK? If so with a hosepipe ban in place and summer coming up it's probably not a good time to lay turf...

How big an area is it? There are other options

Yeah I probably should have given more info oops .

I am in central Minnesota, USA and the lot is 100 X 200 feet. It's a new development that used to be a farmers field so there are no trees yet.

I've put in several systems. The best way to do it is to draw out your lawn and let one of the sprinkler supply vendors design it for you. Rainbird will do it for you or sometimes the local vendors will.

You might also look at some of the subsurface systems. Lots less water loss and rationing won't affect you since no one will know when you are watering.

Leaky Pipe has systems. In that case, the design is easy. Ditch every 12" and lay Leakey Pipe in the ground. The good thing is you don't have to be very deep (3-6"). The bad thing about subsurface systems is you have to filter the water.

Subsurface irrigation is all the rage on commercial irrigation now. Lift costs for irrigation water is high and the cost of subsurface compared to normal circular irrigaition systems is easily paid out by fuel and electricity savings. DSI is a company that has done a lot of agricultural, commercial and residential.

Just one warning on subsurface stuff: when it breaks, it's not pretty to fix. I've got this in some parts of my garden and it's just far too easy to stick a shovel right through the water line. Even a small puncture requires repair or else you'll have water leaking out of the hole. You'll get very little, if any, water downstream of a puncture. Unless you know where you damaged the pipe (and you often don't), you've got to basically dig the whole line up and look for the hole. Then, most likely, you cut out the broken part and patch it with a solid piece that has two male connectors on each side.

There are two main variants on leaky pipes: soft things, like garden hoses, that have lots of tiny holes everywhere, and harder things that have holes spaced out every few inches. The harder pipes are probably more resistant to damage, but the root systems of plants can grow straight through the holes and start clogging your pipe. The solution, I understand, is to wrap the pipes in some sort of fabric that lets water through but not plants. Uggh.

For contrast, a traditional pop-up sprinkler system had hard PVC pipes, so the only thing you have to really worry about is damage to the sprinkler heads. (Or, in my own garden, it's the damn heads getting dirt and crap in them that requires you to disassemble and clean out the individual heads.)

There must be a better solution, somewhere, but I don't know what that might be.

Hehe, I haven't watered or fertiized my lawn in at LEAST 5 years. The damn stuff just keps growing despite my best efforts to neglect it.

Hi Matt,
I've installed 3 or 4 systems over the years and have learned a lot along the way...

Here's a link with a lot of good information, although it may be overwhelming. Some of the info is for larger commercial systems, but there's some good basic information as well.

http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/

I could write a lot about the subject, but here's just a couple of tips to get you started (assuming you install sprinklers)....

1) Coverage: I can't emphasize this enough. If you go to Home Depot, they have a couple of different design brochures that you can take home and look at. The issue of coverage is pretty simple...The gist of it is that the area around one particular sprinkler is watered by the adjacent sprinkler. So they have to be close enough to overlap so that you get head-to-head coverage. For example, if you install sprinklers that will throw 8 feet, then consider installing them 6 or 7 feet apart so the coverage works. If you put them 8 feet apart (for an 8 foot throw), you'll probably have dry spots.

2) Pressure: The Hunter brand sprinklers I use are rated for pressures of something like 25 or 30 pounds (I don't have my data sheet handy). The great thing about them (and other brands that have this feature) is that the length of throw and the angle of spray are fully adjustable. Back to pressure: If you have water pressure on your property of 60-90 pounds (many folks do), then you'll need to reduce that pressure to get the best out of your system. If the pressure is too high, the sprinklers will be overdriven, mist/cloud like crazy, and perhaps damage the sprinkler components over time. The high pressure will ultimately waste water and affect your coverage pattern. I installed a pressure regulator on the sprinklers that is set to something like 45-50 pounds. When one zone of sprinklers are running (in my case, 8-10 sprinklers), the numbers of heads that are spraying will reduce the pressure so that each head gets about 25-30 pounds and everything works well....

I hope that helps, and please let me know if you have any specific questions....

Thanks, Randy

I think if I lived anywhere that required irrigation to keep a lawn growing then I just wouldn't have a lawn. It seems hugely wasteful to use all that water just to keep a lawn growing that would otherwise die.

Though I am of course a complete hypocrite when it comes to sustain-ability, I am happy to keep 3 PCs running 24/7 and I drive a performance car that only does about 22mpg.

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Yeah, because the reason they ration water is because people don't like seeing it.

The reason they ration where I live is because the area has had extensive "rural" development on land that is the city's primary water. Every 3 acre plot of land on the water shed has a 2 acre pond. The watershed has an efficiency now of about 5-10% depending on ground saturation.

Better yet is when a developer puts in a parking lot, they have to install flood control ponds to keep the water from running off through the town ... into the lake.

My favorite thing they have done is participating in a large reservoir about 15 years ago. The city I live in failed to install their water inlet at the time of construction. By the time they installed the 70 mile pipeline to the reservoir they had to spend three times what it would have cost when the reservoir was empty. Then they installed the water treatment plant (to reduce salinity through RO) and didn't install sufficient waste water facilities to actually use either the pipeline or treatment plant. $100 million later, we still ration.

You can make (legitimate) arguments about your local government's inefficiencies all you want, but that still doesn't mean that you should get to use water when other people don't, especially for something as frivolous as making sure that your lawn looks pretty. And you can't make the argument that no one should ration because then you'd be out of water.

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I think if I lived anywhere that required irrigation to keep a lawn growing then I just wouldn't have a lawn. It seems hugely wasteful to use all that water just to keep a lawn growing that would otherwise die.

I always said that too but I need to put something down I have gravel now and it's dusty as heck. Also I think there was some mention in the covenant about grass being required.

I don't really know if I need to water or not but I figure if I do the in ground system is way easier and now is the best time to put it in.

Thanks for the link all I could find on google was rainbird.com and pages with many ads but no information.

At Home Depot, I've seen both Rainbird and Toro brochures that describe their products and they also have a worksheet on the back of the brochure with a grid, etc. where you can lay out your design. They also offer a service where you can fill out a form, etc. and send it in and they'll design the system for you and then send a bill of materials, etc.

I never did that because it seemed like a lot of work for all the information they wanted. But it may be worth it to you to have them do it....

Thanks, Randy

I thought about sending in the rainbird one but as pointed out on the site you linked you are then kind of tied to their products which isn't that big of a deal maybe.

Do they always use PVC for the main runs ? I was expecting it to be some kind of flexible tubing like PEX.

It sounds to me like you go from your main water supply to a valve. Then run the PVC from that around where the sprinkler heads go. Then you tee into the PVC and connect the heads using a possibly flexible tube.

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possibly flexible tube

I don't know if anyone uses flexible lines to connect the heads or not. I have not seen it in our area. One word of caution though is using that technique will likely lead to the heads leaning over with time. You depend on the PVC to keep the head in a vertical position.

Yesterday I bought a book about this at homedepot and they recommend using the flexible stuff for cold climates but I can see what you mean about the heads moving.

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using the flexible stuff for cold climates

Interesting. I had not thought about freeze protection. We never have to worry about that. Flex pipe would eliminate that. If you use PVC, you would have to have it drain.



Here is a pretty sweet tutorial with perhaps some real world advice.

That's what I thought too until I got the house and now the entire outside and windows are covered with dirt because there is nothing keeping the gravel from blowing around.

Does anyone know of a place to find what would be a native grass type plant for my area (minnesota) At the garden centers they just have blends of blue grass and fescue.

The other problem with trying to use a native species is the area has been totally changed since the developer came in and leveled everything then removed all the topsoil.

Here is what I started with

Contact your local agricultural extension, they should be able to tell you what grasses do best in your area, as well as give you advice on how to water/fertilize/check ph etc...

Yours is here.

More specifically, information on grass choice is here.
-Zeke

Thanks for the links.

Yeah I was over simplifying. I read about the anti drain back valve you are referring to. For cold climates they also say I need sprinkler heads with drains and some kind of drain valve near the water supply connection.

As someone who took six years to get anything but chickweed & crabgrass to grow in his back yard, I sympathise with your plight. In the end I had it all roto-tilled, seeded and got true-green (evil, I know, I know). I now have grass. My main issue was sandy soil & over-compacted soil. I'd tried seeding it myself for years, but to no avail.

'Luck.

-Zeke