Sprinklers for New Lawn

10 years ago

My wife and I just built a new house and we are getting ready to have our lawn installed the end of next week.
We live in SE WI (Kenosha area) and we are not having an irrigation system installed at this time (budget got wrecked on house overages)

Anyway, i am trying to figure out how I cam going to keep the grass seed watered.
I will attach the landscape plan as well as the dimensions for out lot with the house on it.

what kind of sprinklers are best?
How many?

I planned to have 5 hoses running off of 2 spigots (2 off of one, 3 off of the other) I will have a timer on each spigot so I can stagger the waterings to get the best water pressure possible.

I amazon order currently has :
2 of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004Y9YEUA/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

2 of these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036GA7K8/ref=ox_sc_act_title_6?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

1 of these:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VUA82K/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Sorrt this post is so long, just want to make sure i keep my lawn well watered so it looks amazing.

Any advice, criticisms, etc.. would be most appreciated.

Thanks

Featured Answer

tiemco

10 years ago

last modified: 9 years ago

The only real way to determine what you need is by actually setting the sprinklers up and running them. Water pressure varies quite a bit all over the country, if you have very high pressure you might be able to run a few sprinklers at the same time. I am not a huge fan of the first sprinkler for keeping seed moist, as they take longer than the impacts, and apply water unevenly. Impacts are good, just make sure you check them from time to time as they can become lose. The cylindrical oscillators on a spike are also very good, a bit more precise than the impacts.

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Comments (7)

kaljr82
Original Author
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Here are the dimensions of the lot.
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dchall_san_antonio
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
We can help you grow grass but if you want help for an irrigation system, try the irrigation system forum.
HamsterHuey
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Tiemco - Isn't the first one he linked a cylindrical oscillating sprinkler?

I own a bunch of Gilmour impact sprinklers (the heavy duty kind), the pattern master which OP linked to, an oscillating sprinkler as well as the quick-snap, in-ground sprinklers (http://www.quick-snap.com/). When I was testing them out on newly seeded soil, I found that the impact sprinklers produced large drops of water that also fell on the soil with a lot of lateral momentum and easily washed off seed from the top of the soil. The pattern master is also similar. Not to say you won't have any success with them but perhaps topdressing with petemoss or some mulch would be a good idea if using an impact sprinkler.

Oscillating sprinklers I think are fairly good as the water falls down gently. However, the one I have is not a very large area coverage sprinkler so it is quite uniform. Not sure about the uniformity with the OPs 1st link.

Ultimately, I settled for the quick-snap sprinklers. What I really like about them is that you get essentially the same performance as a professional install if you place them in the right locations. The spray from these sprinklers are much more uniform while also being gentler on the soil/seed. I wrote about them in detail in another post which I will copy-paste below:

I purchased 5 quick connect underground sprinklers a few months back and have been exceptionally happy with them. I would highly recommend that you follow the advice in this review: Amazon Review

It works out cheaper to just order the U shaped joints from the quicksnap website: QuickSnap Store - Parts

And to buy the recommended K2 smartset sprinklers from HomeDepot. The recommended sprinklers in that review are superior to the default sprinkler that comes with the package as you can easily set both left and right stops without having to remove the sprinkler from the ground. This is really really handy and makes installation a breeze and gives you the flexibility to adjust spray coverage of the sprinklers when renovating sections of your lawn.

The other reason I really like this product over the other ones is that it uses off-the-shelf sprinklers so you are not locked into any specific brand of overpriced sprinklers. More importantly, if you are renovating and planting seed on bare soil, these pop-up sprinklers have a much finer spray which does a great job of providing water to the seed without washing them away. Some of the other products have much coarser drops which aren't all that great for watering newly seeded beds.

I am actually just in the process of renovating a 3000sq ft section of my backyard and I don't think I would have had remotely decent results without the help of these sprinklers. I still have to manually move the hose about from one sprinkler to the other, but with the aid of a digital timer and the quick-snap hose connectors, it really isn't that big a deal.

Here is a picture of my quick-snap sprinkler in action in week 2 of my renovation:
{{gwi:111829}}

This post was edited by HamsterHuey on Fri, Aug 30, 13 at 8:35
tiemco
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Oops, you're right, I meant to write a gear drive sprinkler, like this one.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Orbit-H20-Six-Gear-90-sq-ft-Drive-Sprinkler-27907/100659307#.UiCfC3_lexM
kaljr82
Original Author
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Darn. Don't think I have time to get everything ordered and installed for the quicksnap spirnklers.

Yesterday I ordered one each of the sprinklers i linked and will have them today to see how they do with my yard.

Was just curious for other peoples experiences.
We are hydroseeding so hopefully that will help keep the seed in place even.

thanks!
HamsterHuey
10 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I think you should be fine. Plenty of people use the oscillating sprinklers with great success. The pattern master isn't as ideal and doesn't distribute water very uniformly in a radial direction but it is really fantastic for watering non-uniformly shaped yards.

I forgot to mention that the quick-snap company is atrociously slow with orders. Took them 3 weeks to ship out the parts and another week to get here. You can get them via Prime shipping on Amazon, but that works out to be quite a bit more expensive than if you take the DIY assembly of components approach.