re: DIY yard sprinkler system...water hookup

quote:

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Cool. If they show me the placement and types of heads, I'll route the plumbing/lines. Neighbor and I are looking at going in 1/2s on a ditch witch and do his yard and mine together over a weekend type thing (he's government and I'm a contractor so we can take off together and do it over a 4 day weekend if necessary).

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That is 100% the smartest way to do it if you can. Having done it myself, my suggestions are

1. plan plan plan. I cannot stress the importance of having a good design. You may have the head placement figured out once rainbird sends you back the diagram, but what about the valves, valve boxes, drains, and all of the other infrastructure. For example, I put a water release at the low spot in my lines to make winterization easier. I put gravel at the bottom of all of my valve boxes. I filtered all of my lines, etc.

2. If you want the best system you can build, avoid roto sprays and get rotary nozzles. The two best are Hunter MP Rotators and Rainbird RVAN. Hunter MPs spray .4 gal per minute while RVANs are .6 i think.

3. Figure out your water pressure. You have to call the city to get a nominal number and then you have to actually measure at the main. This is critical in deciding how many zones you need.

4. Make zones out of areas that will require similar watering. So if you have an area that you could put on one zone, but half of it is in heavy heat/sunlight and the other half is in heavy shade, you might consider separating that into two zones so you can give extra water to the heat-exposed lawn and not overwater the shaded areas. Same goes with landscaping. Don't run landscaping watering off your lawn zones, you'll always have a water imbalance somewhere.

5. Install automatic drains in the lines.

6. Automate your system with something like a Rachio Gen 2/Gen 3 timer. It makes all the difference in teh world being able to turn on your sprinklers with your phone and having a system that will skip a watering if it rained.

7. Rent one of the bigger trenchers when you actually do the project. It may sound stupid, but the smaller trenchers actually take more time and I have found upgrading to a slightly bigger trencher makes a huge difference.

8. Use PVC for the mains and not poly pipe. Poly pipe for the lateral lines is fine, though I have PVC all the way to the laterals and then ran poly pipe/swing joints to the spray heads.

9. Do not buy your spray heads from a big box store. Research the heads on the mfg. website and then buy from a direct store like sprinklerwarehouse.com