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Old 07-07-2004, 07:02 PM
Pete Stephenson
 
Posts: n/a
Default Lawn watering with impact sprinklers?

Greetings all,

I'm relatively new to this group, and have a few questions that I think
you all might be able to answer.

I'm attempting to water a fairly large amount of lawn. I have three
spiked impact sprinklers (the ones that make the "ticking" noise) that
can throw water about 80 feet and an ample amount of hose.

I'm wondering what the optimal way to deploy these sprinkers are, and
how much watering I should be doing in order to properly water the grass
that is here. There are sufficient faucets on the exterior of the
buildings and I have sufficient hoses to move the sprinklers to any
position necessary (corners of the lawn, center, edges, etc.).

Water pressure is pretty good, so using two sprinklers daisy-chained
together is acceptable, but three is not effective. I also have a small
square "It gets the corners!" sprinkler to fill in the areas not reached
by the impact sprinklers.

A crude ASCII map of the area is as follows:

_______________________________
| |
| |
| |
| _____________ |
|--------| |--------|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
|-40ft-|Building #1 |--------|
| | | ^ |
| | | 100ft |
| | | v |
|--------| |--------|
| |____________| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| _____________ |
|--------| |--------|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
|--------|Building #2 |--------|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
|--------| |--------|
| |____________| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
_______________________________|

It's not entirely to scale. Each plot of grass is about 40 feet wide,
but 100 feet long. It's too much to be covered by a single sprinkler.
Two slightly-overlapping sprinklers work fairly well, and leave only a
few "dead spots".

Given that I'm in Washington State, and have no idea what species of
grass (it's standard army issue grass) is here, and given that water
puddles up after about an hour of watering, what would be the most
efficient way of deploying the sprinklers (with the least amount of
movement and re-adjustment), and how long should I water each particular
area, and how long should I wait before re-watering?

Sorry for the large amount of vagueness in this question...I'm not
terribly familiar with the types of grass that the army uses in
Washington State. Needless to say, I'm trying to keep the lawns as green
as possible with the least amount of effort (gardening is not my primary
job, but I try to do what I can).

Many thanks!

--
Pete Stephenson
HeyPete.com