Sprinklers for Seeding New Lawn 178'x12' strip 'L' shaped

[Ban Bot]

TL;DR: I need sprinklers to water a stretch cumulatively 178 feet long and 12 feet wide. The stretch is in a slightly curved 'L' shape.

I am planting new lawn seed. My lawn is dead.

Long version. OK, I killed my lawn. Well, murder is more like it. After Scott's Weed and Feed, moss killing granules (3 applications!--I live north of Seattle), spot treating the weeds with generic Roundup, and hitting the blackberries with brush/vine killer and then extracting them I have about 1% grass left in my yard.

Yes, 1%. And that 1% looks suspiciously like a wild field grass (not quite crabgrass--but close!) and not worth saving.

So I am getting 15+ yards of topsoil and three bottles of Motrin to grade and level the yard and will be planting new seed. We already did this to the front strip next to the drive where we had to dig up the water line. The end result there is fantastic--day 31 after planting Pennington's NW drought resistant blend and it looks awesome. Seedlings sprouted 5 days (bag said 7-14) and in 2 weeks we HAD to mow as it was 5-6 inches! I have been mowing down to 4 inches and it is dense, dark green, and healthy. Keeping the lawn at 4" also seems to be keeping the weeds at bay. Whenever I see a small one I can spot it and pluck it.

So we are going to do this for the rest of the yard.

Problem: Watering.

We have a faucet on the NORTH alley of the house and in the backyard on the WEST on the SOUTHERN corner. It is inside the fenced back yard.

Our yard has 6 "areas" or zones. I would post the pick but I don't have a place to host right now. Needless to say our yard is broken up into a lot of pieces.

The house sits in the middle of a rectangular 0.31 acres lot. The driveway is on the EAST and is about 60ft long and ~ 25 feet wide. There is a strip (zone 6) to its north that is only 7 feet wide. This part is already seeded.

The front yard (zone 2) is on the EAST next to our driveway is surrounded by landscaping and is 35x35. This area we are edging with brick to keep the mulch off and to add 2" of new topsoil. This part will be EASY to water

The back yard (zone 1) is on the WEST behind the house and is fenced. It is 40x71 feet. This should be easy to water.

Here are the problem spots: There are strips ~ 10-15 feet wide all around the SOUTH and WEST portions outside the house/fence. A crude picture:

,,==========_
//............--_
||..............--
||..............
||..............
||..............
||..............
 
= West strip Zone 4
|| South strip Zone 3
--_ North strip Zone 5
... Yard inside fence; strip is outside fence

So here are the areas I have to water

• Backyard -- Zone 1 -- 40 x 71
• Front yard -- Zone 2 -- 35 x 35
• South Strip -- Zone 3 -- 94 x 12
• West Strip -- Zone 4 -- 49 x 10
• Northwest Strip -- Zone 5 -- 35 x 12
• Minimal: Front Drive Strip -- Zone 6 -- 55 x 7

HELP! What sprinklers will work well for the outside strip? I know they make pass through ones that you can adjust the spray, e.g. these that can do 180 degree or 360 and cove 30 feet. I could use those close to the house on 180 degrees to cover the strip. The bad news is these ones are poorly rated.

I have good water pressure. I could use 2-way or 4-way faucet adapter. The only sprinkler I own is one of these adjustable ones (both for width and spray oscillation angle). My guess is this thing has a reach of 80-90 feet? Rated for 68 but I know I get more than that.

Amazon has a good selection of various items but not sure what would work best--my first time doing anything like this. My wife and I grew up on farms where mowed field grass was the lawn!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2079475242&pf_rd_i=desktop
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004RUFBCQ?psc=1
http://www.amazon.com/Nelson-Rainsc..._sim_86_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=18P37DB88K8RFSTMPTAX
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Thumb-8..._sim_86_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=18P37DB88K8RFSTMPTAX

Honestly, if I could get away with not moving sprinklers 3-5x a day for the first couple weeks that would be preferable. And I look at it longterm if I can leave the sprinklers in their general area I would like that.

Right now I am planning to do the front yard in ~ 1 week and the rest by the middle of August so it can have at least 6 weeks in before the first early front (October 5th--probably won't frost until late October but the guide is October 5th and I ain't chancing all this work!)

 

[Ban Bot]

A sprinkler "hose" that covers 15-20" would be perfect but I don't think those exist (not enough pressure I am sure).

There is the traveling Rain Train Sprinklers. Very cool! But two issues 1) dragging the hose around the bend could be too hard as it would likely hit the fence? 2) dragging the hose across the new lawn (dirt) would mess up the seeding? Maybe a good POST planting solution?

 

[cabri]

If you are going to be bringing in soil; why not run irrigation PVC setup with a hose attachment at one end. Permanent solution.

Rainbird sprinklers screw onto the PVC riser
SP-25-CST - Center Strip
SP-25-SST - Side Strip

Determine the coverage that each type will provide and have fun.

Trench a shallow ditch, lay the lines and cover.

Or just get a normal wave sprinkler and adjust the output for the coverage needed.
If you do not want to drag the hoses around; get a hose splitter and use multiple hoses and/or sprinklers

 

[Ban Bot]

I am with you on the sprinkler system, just need to fit it into the budget/convince the misses! So some browsing...

A number of guides
Lowes (which has an online planning tool)
Popular Mechanics
Sprinkler Warehouse

Some of the materials:

The Polyethelene is cheap: $14 for 100ft of 1/2"

The sprinklers are about $11 each and cover 26-38ft but there are a lot of options/quality/shapes

$20 backflow preventer

About $4 for each riser and T

Would need to work out the manifold design.

So I would need:
$30 for 200ft Poly
$20 for backflow preventer
$88 for at least 8 sprinklers due to corners
$32 for the Ts and risers for the sprinklers

So about $170

Pretty similar to the prefab one for 125ft.

Not outrageous and would make watering easy. One challenge is we plan to have raised beds on the south end of the house, probably next spring. I would just need to design that in mind. My first thought (probably flawed) is to run the sprinklers close to the house with a 180 degree range. This would prevent the house from being sprayed and would work well with the garden beds and lawn. But then I am looking at sprinklers with 15" ranges so as not to water 10-20 feet into the street! That means 10-12 sprinkler heads.

Am I missing anything significant in this thought process?

 

[cabri]

I am with you on the sprinkler system, just need to fit it into the budget/convince the misses! So some browsing...

A number of guides
Lowes (which has an online planning tool)
Popular Mechanics
Sprinkler Warehouse

Some of the materials:

The Polyethelene is cheap: $14 for 100ft of 1/2"

The sprinklers are about $11 each and cover 26-38ft but there are a lot of options/quality/shapes

$20 backflow preventer

About $4 for each riser and T

Would need to work out the manifold design.

So I would need:
$30 for 200ft Poly
$20 for backflow preventer
$88 for at least 8 sprinklers due to corners
$32 for the Ts and risers for the sprinklers

So about $170

Pretty similar to the prefab one for 125ft.

Not outrageous and would make watering easy. One challenge is we plan to have raised beds on the south end of the house, probably next spring. I would just need to design that in mind. My first thought (probably flawed) is to run the sprinklers close to the house with a 180 degree range. This would prevent the house from being sprayed and would work well with the garden beds and lawn. But then I am looking at sprinklers with 15" ranges so as not to water 10-20 feet into the street! That means 10-12 sprinkler heads.

Am I missing anything significant in this thought process?

I rebuilt a 5 zone manifold out of PVC in about 1 hour. Actually 2hr but i had a 3yr old helping

 

[cabri]

Go double check at a local sprinkler shop. Parts prices seem higher tha i remember.

 

[marvdmartian]

Not sure if they make them still, but it used to be you could buy a hose that was designed with holes down the length of it. Hook it up to your hose bib, turn on the water, and it would spray out small streams of water on either side of the hose, distance depending on how much you opened your hose bib.

Similar to the idea of a soaker hose, just covered more of an area. Not sure if it would cover 10' wide, but you could run it for a while, turn off the water, move it over, and turn it back on, if necessary.

 

[tracerbullet]

http://www.gardena.com/int/water-management/sprinkler/comfort-aquazoom-350-2/

This took care of me having to move a small sprinkler around my old house a half dozen times, it is adjustable from full width down to a really narrow pattern about 10' wide or so (at a minimum of course, you can go a little more). Covered 50 - 60' the opposite direction. Loved it.

That said I'd do a sprinkler system with that shape and square footage. But if you decide against it, look at this sprinkler or one of their other couple almost exactly like it.

 

[Ban Bot]

We are going to go with a sprinkler system. We have pretty solid GPM and PSI.

Right now the challenge is deciding if I should go with Rotor Sprinklers or Nozzle.

Going with a Nozzle head I can get a "side strip pattern" that is rectangular. The challenges I will have are

1) The width. The widest are really 9ft and I need 10-12ft.

2) Nozzles with high area coverage have higher "floors" for minimum required PSI/GPM (compared to Rotors) as they spray in all directions the entire time. You can get Rotor Sprinklers that have lower requirements (but at the trade off of volume, hence watering speed).

I will be hooking this up to my yard faucets for the time being (simpler, won't need a permit, cheaper) but I have good water flow. For a nozzle system I would need to plan to break down my system into 2 or 3 active watering lines (which I am 100% ok with).

So it is really issue #1 -- strip width -- that makes me pause. Most of the strip is 10' feet wide and all of it slopes down at least 18" inches so I am debating if the 9' ft patterns would work. Sprinkler Warehouse has some nice charts on all the patterns and sizes. It looks like my options are:

Hunter SS-918 (9 x 18 @ 40psi, 2.08 GPM)

Rain Bird 9SST (9 x 15 @ 40 psi, 1.73 GPM)

Toro 9-SST (9 x 20 @ 40 psi, 1.38 GPM; 10 x 22 @ 50 psi)

Feedback / Opinions?

Should I bother considering the Nozzle Side Strip Pattern Sprinklers?

Or should I be dumping the idea and be looking for rotor sprinklers with 12' - 15' ft (radius) patterns and plan to overlap and call it a day?

 

[cabri]

Remember that the water will seep from the wet areas to the dry areas.

Also, consider running the pattern down the center of the area and having 2 nozzles that will generate a 5-6ft side strip patterns.

 

[cabri]

If you are willing to have a hose and rotary sprinkler setup to be visible, then get a couple of "wave" sprinklers.
You can connect the hoses together with a coupler to allow multiple sprinklers to run from the same line. Many sprinklers can have the throw distance controlled by pressure and arcs(0-180 degree) along with the width adjusted to generate the coverage you need.

 

[marvdmartian]

Almost forgot about this hose sprinkler. I owned a similar one, in the past (when I gave a crap about watering grass, prior to our drought), and it was great that you can adjust the pattern, using the ring height, to pretty much any shape you wanted. Made it much easier to water the corners of a yard!

http://www.lowes.com/pd_99229-306-196SPBGF_1z0wg72__?productId=3104489&pl=1

 

[MustISO]

Sounds like an awesome project. I tried to plant grass in the spring but I'm sure I didn't do it properly. Ended up with a small patch that grew well and the rest of the yard looks like complete crap. We have really bad soil so I think that's part of my issue and that's probably what needs to be fixed first.

 

[cabri]

Sounds like an awesome project. I tried to plant grass in the spring but I'm sure I didn't do it properly. Ended up with a small patch that grew well and the rest of the yard looks like complete crap. We have really bad soil so I think that's part of my issue and that's probably what needs to be fixed first.

Depending on the size of area; get either a U-haul trailer/pickup full or have a dumptruck deliver a load of GOOD topsoil.