In-ground lawn sprinkler installation?

[VaSteve]

Any of you guys install your own in ground lawn sprinker? I'm sick of moving the oscillating ones around. I have heard it can be done for a reasonable cost if you do your own labor (which is relatively free).

Where do you buy the supplies? Have you hooked it directly to your plumbing or just a hose to the faucet? Can you winterize it with a compressor to blow out the lines? What time of year is good for this?

Tips, suggestions?

[stevepaa]

Use schedule 40 PVC for feed water to valves. Does your ground freeze? Usually you bury these lines at least a foot down. If freezing is an issue then you could put a hose bib connection for blowout at the start of the water supply.

[vash]

mikester is right on. you need to buy a cheapo pressure gauge to check psi with gallons per minute. then you can find out how many heads you can have on a circuit. then you need to lay out the heads, remembering that every sq in of lawn needs at least two heads hitting it. overlap is key to green goodness. then stake and paint out the planned layout, and call USA (underground services alert) to check if there are any utilities in the way. FREE! and mandatory by law.

THEN RENT A TRENCHER! i paid $120 a day, and used it for 4 hours. laying out the pipe and heads is cake. there is a "scissor" that ratchets thru the pipe with ease, cheap. and the rest is glue fun. putting down the system was fun.

as far as hooking up to the water supply. it needs to go in after the meter, before the house shut off. hopefully there is a tab there. if not, you will need to do it. hire a plumber to do just that part if you are not comfy.

the freezing part is foriegn to me. nor cal doesnt freeze. my guess is that you will just have to go deeper below the frost line, but i am guessing.

[MikeSid]

I just did this last month. I went to an irrigation wholesaler for my stuff, but Home Depot has most of the same stuff.

It's simple. Spray heads on PVC lines. Lines to valves on a manifold. Valves controlled by controller(timer). From manifold, a single line goes to a doublecheck and then to your main line.

"Irritrol" valves were recommended to me and HD didn't carry those. HD also didn't have a brass double check. You'll need a double check to keep contaminents out of your potable water supply.

I used poly pipe to the manifold and copper the rest of the way...but if I had it to do over again, I'd use PVC instead of poly.

Mikester is right about water pressure. Determine what your pressure is and make sure you don't put too many heads on the same circuit. You'll also want to have different circuits for beds and lawns since they have different watering needs.

Spray head should provide double coverage for lawn areas, so map out the arc of each head and make sure you overlap at least twice.

oh...and the double check has fittings to blow out the lines (as well as blow out each section of the double check).

Digging is back breaking work....but it's certainly not mentally taxing.

[VaSteve]

Cool!

When you say circuit, I am assuming yours are controlled in some manner to come on automatically for different parts of the lawn at different times?

As far as freezing... I don't know much about that either. I heard that the ground freezes from a neighbor (never tried digging it myself) but that may have been from a pro installer telling the neighbor so he could come back each fall to winterize it.

[MikeSid]

Put a valve in the line on the house side of the doublecheck. Every winter, shut the valve and blow out the double check and line with compressed air. Nuthin in the line to freeze.

The circuits are controlled by electronic solonoid operated valves which are wired to the controller.

[RickM]

Here's a great tutorial site on DIY irrigation: http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/ You may want to check with local code officials to see if you have to go below the frost line (36-48 inches).

[targa911S]

Making the manifold is the only tricky part. Cut in the zones and don't use too many nozzles per zone as to keep the water pressure up. Then use a solinoid valve for each zone and wire each to a multi zone timer. Done.

[tabs]

If your water pressure is more than 80 PSI then you will need a water pressure regulator...to cut down the pressure, or your mainwater line will have a tendency of blowing apart ..usually when your not home...my first house had 130 PSI....

Home Depot or Lowes has all the supplies U need. I like Rainbird...it's all like tinker toys....and it's best to stay with ONE mfg of heads..Rainbird, Toro etc...parts from different mfg's are not interchangeable...

It's best to build a Sprinkler valve manifold so that you can replace valves by unscrewing them instead of cutting PVC pipe...another thing is to palce a gate valve before every manifold you have...simply if one manifold has a problem yu can shut just that maniflold down instead of the WHOLE system..

He is another trick...if you have a 1" main water line to the house, buy 1" sprinkler Valves ....1" intake....1" outflow......then immediatily (wihin one foot) on the outflow side, reduce it down to 3/4" so that the RUNS are 3/4"pvc pipe...that will boost your water pressure by restriction... also towards the end of a run if you need to boost pressure you can reduce it to 1/2"......or if U wana get reallly crazy make each run into a loop so that each head will get exactly the same pressure...

Also by all means by a Sprinkelr Valve Timer and make the system automatic...in running the underground wire from the timer to the valves either tape it to the pvc pipe or better yet run the wire in it's own pipe...simply if digging in the garden one day..a shovel cuts through the wire real easy....and one forgets exactly where it was buried in the first place...real easy.

The only problem with the automatic valves is that every few years a solenoid will go bad and have to be replaced... I used Plastic valves....by Orbit or?????? they were grey...hows that for ya...Brass valves by Champion were nothing but headachs...I had them at my first house....

For trees and shrubs it might be a good idea to use a Bubbler head so that your just watering that plant...saves water...or go drip system...which is the way it's done in LV...

When Gluing this stuff use a Primer and the HOT BLUE GLUE

In my house in Alta Loma I had 13 (Valves) sprinkler runs with a total of 360 heads....and other than the gardner cutting a sprinkler head with a lawn mower, cleaning dirt etc out of some of the heads, or replacing an occasional solenoid...I had NO PROBLEMS with my system in 13 years... I ran an Irritrol 18 Station Proffessional Timer....

[MikeSid]

Originally posted by tabs
He is another trick...if you have a 1" main water line to the house, buy 1" sprinkler Valves ....1" intake....1" outflow......then immediatily (wihin one foot) on the outflow side, reduce it down to 3/4" so that the RUNS are 3/4"pvc pipe...that will boost your water pressure by restriction...

Everything else is dead on, but the boost by restriction thing is a commonly held plumbing myth. That won't increase your water pressure.

[Porschephile944]

My parents have had one at there house for about 10 years now. No major problems with it besides the usual things like pounding tent stakes into the ground and finding the pipe or the snow plow ruining the heads. If they were going to have it re-installed or another one put in they have said they would want about a 1/3 more heads so they have better coverage. They would also have the heads near the driveway/street set back farther so the snowplow doesn't rip them up. During the winter, because the ground does freeze during the winter they have the company that installed it blow it out. Just uses compressed air to get the water out of the lines.

[RickM]

Regarding line purging; if it's anything like an in-ground pool (which I suspect it is) a compressor may be ineffective. I use a leaf blower (Stihl BR400) to winterize my lines. Massive CFMs are what you want, not high pressure. (A large shop vac with a blower option is good as well)

[vash]

mikesid. necking down will increase pressure, but only on the wideside of the neck, right? the head will see whatever is getting to it. i think. probably negligable, because the friction head is so short. nevermind.

[MikeSid]

Water pressure is a function of your city utility and gravity. Restricting pipe size doesn't increase or decrease the pressure the city gives you. And even the "wideside" pressure stays the same. If you close all the faucets in your house, your pressure doesn't go up. It is what it is and it's what the city gives you.

An open hose end and one with your thumb over it feels different, but its not a difference in the amount of pressure, just the size area over which it is dispersed.