Irrigation System

[Vulgar Display of Orange]

Anyone know anything about lawn irrigation?

[Ivan]

We have a pro on the board if he's not busy. He gave me a bunch of good info let me see if I can find the thread.

[Ivan]

http://www.ostatesports.com/community/showthread.php?t=17223

A typical house on a 75" wide x 125' +/- lot should have 5-6 zones. front, back, sides, & beds. 99% of the companies out there will quote you a per zone price. Right now you can expect anywhere from $450 - $600 per zone.

There are companies out there that will try and sell you a per zone price that will be way way low. Watch out for these guys because if something goes wrong, good luck getting a hold of them to come back and fix anything.

Sprinklers are designed by the size of your water meter and amount of water the city supplies. In OKC/Edmond you can bank on 21-24 gallons per min.

A typical rotor (turf) zone is 7 heads. There are companies out there that will quote you $250 per zone and only put 3 heads per zone. You dont want this. What one company can do with one zone at $500, the cheap company charges you the same for 2 zones.

A rotor will come with a 3 gallon per min nozzel. You can go higher or lower with the gpm nozzel size, but a 3 gpm nozzel throws out a better water droplet. You dont want too fine of water droplet as it will evaporate before it hits the ground, and you dont want too big of droplet as it wont travel very far. So 3 gpm nozzels are pretty standard on residential systems.

So take that information 7 heads x 3 gpm = 21 gpm which fits your supply from the city. You dont want 9 heads per zone because 9 x 3 = 27 gpm which you dont have enough supply to do. Make sense?

Typically with the per zone price that will include the backflow, controll box, all parts and labor.

Now if you live on an acreage and your on a well, you will need to let the company know how many gallons of water your well produces so they can design the system accordingly.

If you have a pool or are thinking of a pool down the road, I have connected the sprinkler system to the pool fill line.

[wickerbill]

I have a friend who I was a roommate with at OSU that owns his own business in Tulsa that does repairs. He doesn't install them from scratch though.

[Vulgar Display of Orange]

I have a system that I'm positive is undersized, but I will deal with that later. Two zones - front and back. When I bought the house I knew that there were some issues with the back, but I never followed up with the guy on what the issues were and was too scared to turn the zone on. Today, I decided to turn it on just to see. I turned it on and nothing...I thought. As I was about to shut it down I noticed a geyser by the street. I dug it up and apparently the last guy tried to replace a head, but I don't know...he couldn't fix it or it was going to be more involved to fix it...I don't know. So apparently instead of capping the pipe or leaving the old head on he just covered the hole back up.

Anyhow, I bought a new head and and the plumbing I thought I would need to fix it. When I got home I opened the box and started reading and it said that in climates where freezing is an issue the side nozzle should be used with a drain valve in the bottom nozzle instead of just using the bottom nozzle and plugging the side.

My question was is it really necessary? The pipe and fittings that I bought were for using the bottom nozzle, and using the side nozzle would require another fitting and a drain valve. According to Holly/Sinclair/Sunoco the frost depth in Tulsa is somewhere around 30" which BS bc it's based on a 100 or 500 yr event and probably overkill on top of that. So I was trying to decide if the frost depth was less than 8 or 9 inches. In the end I was up against daylight and rain that never happened, so I went back to the hardware store and bought more stuff and did it the way the box told me to.

[jaredddick]

It depends:

Oklahoma average rainfall: 37"

Arizona average rainfall: 14"

Florida average rainfall: 55"

California average rainfall: 22"

That's free by the way...

[Landscapepoke]

[QUOTE=Vulgar Display of Orange;110924]

Anyhow, I bought a new head and and the plumbing I thought I would need to fix it. When I got home I opened the box and started reading and it said that in climates where freezing is an issue the side nozzle should be used with a drain valve in the bottom nozzle instead of just using the bottom nozzle and plugging the side.

QUOTE]

not needed.

Sounds like you purchased a 12" spray head that has a side and bottom attachment point. We never put a drain on the bottom of these heads its just not needed. Thats the mgf covering their liability on the chances to the head ever freezing.

[Vulgar Display of Orange]

That's sort of what I was thinking. All is well. It's in the ground now.