Need guidance

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mkuskie
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Need guidance

Post by mkuskie » July 8th, 2020, 1:43 pm

I am trying to create my own system that will, in the end, be 3 stages off of my water spigot on the back of the house. I have tested the pressure coming off the spigot and its right at 70psi. I have not done the GPM test with a 5 gallon bucket, will do that tonight. I am running 1/2 inch tubing from the spigot, then T'ing off to each head (RainBird 32eti). Right now for testing I have 3 heads on one line or stage.

Problem: I have to physically pull up the heads to get them to spray and when they do the stream is ok, but not a full spinkler stream. In the image I posted, yellow line is my 1/2, white circles are heads. Its a rough picture.

Question 1: Would it do me any good to run 1 inch tubing from the spigot then back down to 1/2 closer to the first head?

Question 2: Should I only run 2 heads per stage?


Any help would be great
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schreibdave
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Re: Need guidance

Post by schreibdave » July 8th, 2020, 6:17 pm

I have done what you are doing and the only advice I can give is to test it before you bury it. I could never run three heads at once but in a few places I could run two. But in most places I could only run one per zone.

My set up is a big box store timer with 4 outlets attached to my spigots. And from there 1" pvc buried to my rainbird heads. It mostly works great. The biggest challenge was sourcing the various fitting to go from the hose thread on the timer to the pipe thread on the pvc fittings.

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turf_toes
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Re: Need guidance

Post by turf_toes » July 8th, 2020, 9:32 pm

Replace the half-inch tubing with 1-inch polypipe.

Otherwise, you’ll be lucky to get a single head per zone.

Use the lowest nozzle on each head. You’ll need to run it longer, but it will maintain pressure better.

Make sure your timer has a back flow preventer too.

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andy10917
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Re: Need guidance

Post by andy10917 » July 8th, 2020, 9:40 pm

+1. One more thing - the typical spigot should be eliminated from the line too - it often causes a large flow rate drop.

schreibdave
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Re: Need guidance

Post by schreibdave » July 9th, 2020, 6:00 am

andy10917 wrote:
July 8th, 2020, 9:40 pm
+1. One more thing - the typical spigot should be eliminated from the line too - it often causes a large flow rate drop.
I rely on my spigots to serve as backflow preventers. So if you take the spigot out of the equation you would need to install a back flow preventer - or in my case four of them since I run my system from four different spigots. In my system I think the biggest restriction in the system is the Orbit timer.
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mkuskie
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Re: Need guidance

Post by mkuskie » July 9th, 2020, 9:17 am

Thanks all!

I tested GPM this morning and I got 8.8 at 70 PSI. Also I do have a backflow preventer on the silcock that I am coming off of, used the wrong terminology. I have already built out the 3 heads with connectors and all, haven't buried it yet though. My other runs I plan to make will be close to the outlet. I am still wondering for my long run if 1 inch poly would help at all.

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Need guidance

Post by ken-n-nancy » July 9th, 2020, 10:57 am

mkuskie wrote:
July 9th, 2020, 9:17 am
I am still wondering for my long run if 1 inch poly would help at all.
Upgrading pipe (hose) size makes a huge difference in flow and pressure on long runs.

Image

If you need help interpreting the graph, please don't hesitate to ask. However, I don't know if you're already an engineer, in which case you won't need any help...

mkuskie
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Re: Need guidance

Post by mkuskie » July 9th, 2020, 12:12 pm

WOW!! That really puts it in perspective! Thanks for this. I will be going to buy fittings and pipe tonight!

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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Need guidance

Post by ken-n-nancy » July 9th, 2020, 1:27 pm

mkuskie wrote:
July 9th, 2020, 12:12 pm
WOW!! That really puts it in perspective! Thanks for this. I will be going to buy fittings and pipe tonight!
Glad that the table helped; I had a feeling you may be an engineer and know how to read the chart.
mkuskie wrote:
July 9th, 2020, 9:17 am
I tested GPM this morning and I got 8.8 at 70 PSI. ... I am still wondering for my long run if 1 inch poly would help at all.
For the non-engineers that might be following along, I now have a few extra moments that I could read some data off the chart to apply the chart to the circumstance.

In the case being asked about, 8.8gpm is the flow rate at 70psi. If 1/2" pipe is used for a 50' run at an 8.8gpm flow rate, we can use the chart to calculate the pressure drop. To do that, use the upper left diagonal dark blue line (the one for 1/2" pipe according to the legend), find where it intersects the vertical line for 9gpm (close enough to 8.8gpm) for water flow, and see that it indicates that there will be about an 80psi drop for a 100' run. A 50' run would be half of that, which would be a 40psi drop. So, one would only get about 30psi (70psi - 40psi) at the heads in that setup, which is at the edge of what is needed to lift the heads, as reported by the original poster.

However, if 1" pipe were used instead for that same 50' run at an 8.8gpm flow rate, the chart has the light blue line for the 1" pipe intersect the vertical line for 9gpm at about 3psi drop for a 100' run. A 50' run would only show a 1.5psi drop. So, there would still be plenty of pressure at the heads in that setup. Now of course, one won't actually get as little as a 1.5psi drop, as there will be places where there are smaller fittings between the water source and the head, which will reduce flow, but the difference between a 1/2" pipe and a 1" pipe for water flow at the pressures and rates for irrigation systems is huge -- the difference between the system working well and not being able to lift up the heads.

schreibdave
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Re: Need guidance

Post by schreibdave » July 9th, 2020, 9:19 pm

FWIW I found that Lowes has the best price on 1" poly pipe and fittings near me. But they don't sell sprinkler heads. Site One (was John Deere and Lesco) has it all but for more money. I did almost my entire project before discovering this.

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andy10917
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Re: Need guidance

Post by andy10917 » July 9th, 2020, 10:58 pm

I've used Sprinkler Warehouse (online) now for over a decade. I'd never go into HD or Lowes for sprinkler heads, valves, etc -- the selection and prices at Sprinkler Warehouse just put the bigbox stores to shame.

schreibdave
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Re: Need guidance

Post by schreibdave » July 10th, 2020, 6:52 am

andy10917 wrote:
July 9th, 2020, 10:58 pm
I've used Sprinkler Warehouse (online) now for over a decade. I'd never go into HD or Lowes for sprinkler heads, valves, etc -- the selection and prices at Sprinkler Warehouse just put the bigbox stores to shame.
Because I was cobbing something together I needed to be able to stand there with the parts in hand and see if they would work. There was also a guy at Site One who was very helpful. But now that I have done this once I could probably order on line.

First time through it would be a challenge to replicate this mess on line ...

Image

southern-ct-4
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Re: Need guidance

Post by southern-ct-4 » July 10th, 2020, 12:03 pm

schreibdave wrote:
July 10th, 2020, 6:52 am
andy10917 wrote:
July 9th, 2020, 10:58 pm
I've used Sprinkler Warehouse (online) now for over a decade. I'd never go into HD or Lowes for sprinkler heads, valves, etc -- the selection and prices at Sprinkler Warehouse just put the bigbox stores to shame.
Because I was cobbing something together I needed to be able to stand there with the parts in hand and see if they would work. There was also a guy at Site One who was very helpful. But now that I have done this once I could probably order on line.

First time through it would be a challenge to replicate this mess on line ...
That's a great setup and I'm jealous. I have a similar 4 prong hose timer, but then just 4 hoses all over my hard going to 4 sprinkler heads (a combination of https://www.homedepot.com/p/Orbit-Gear- ... /100659307 , https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001S ... UTF8&psc=1 (setup above ground) and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ND ... UTF8&psc=1)... Would love to swap the hoses for pvc or poly and get them underground.

To confirm (and sorry to jump and kind of hi-jack this thread), you do not have a separate backflow, you just have the 4 prong timer on your regular spigot, correct? My spigot looks somewhat like this: https://www.amazon.com/EZ-Flo-20221-Bra ... ef=sr_1_26 but is pretty old (but works fine). Should I have it replaced with some other kind?

Also, when you ran pvc to the sprinkler heads, do you just have 4 pipes going to 4 heads, or did you split the pipes off to multiple heads? In either case, do you mind if I ask what you used to connect the pipe to the sprinkler head?

For me, I'm thinking that if I try this, I would just run 4 pipes (or perhaps poly as people seem to recommend that and it looks easier, for me anyway, to work with), and connect each one to 1 sprinkler head (the largest size/farthest distance I can find). The current heads that I'm using (above ground and linked to above) go pretty far and I can almost cover my entire 10k front yard (not perfect but good enough).

Thanks for (hopefully) letting me pick your brain on this.

schreibdave
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Re: Need guidance

Post by schreibdave » July 11th, 2020, 9:30 am

Southern Ct-4 -

I just updated an older thread of mine with some new pictures and explanations. Feel free to ask me any questions over there.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=25231&p=341690#p341690

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