Lawn Irrigation System Pitfalls
There are many pitfalls with automatic lawn irrigation systems.
One common problem is where the irrigation system has been installed and the low water pressure causes the jets not to pop up, and/or does not deliver the same amount of water all the time. One solution for this is to irrigate the lawn section by section i.e. switch on the sprinklers in rotation so that the whole lawn is covered but only in sections over a period of time.
This of course assumes that
a) You
are there to switch each section on/off and
b) You are watering an
established lawn. Attempting to start a new lawn from seed has its
obvious failings. For example....
You are seeding a large lawn (say 600M2) and in order to cover the entire lawn area you have calculated you need 6 sprinklers (each covering approx 100M2), and you will switch on each sprinkler in turn throughout the day.
The problem with this approach is simple arithmetic....
Rotating the
process of turning on each sprinkler in any given hour means that at any
given moment only 1/6th of the lawn is getting watered. Or to put it
another way - In any given hour 5/6 (over 80%) of the lawn is
dry. Best Fix) Installing a separate pump to increase the water pressure
for your irrigation will solve this problem. Next Best Fix) Install
electronically operated water valves, controlled from a central
timer and set the timer to cycle a few minutes at a time. Lastly
- Workaround) Make sure you or someone is on hand to manually switch
the system. Be careful with this approach as walking over newly sown
seed many times a day will inevitably kill some of the grass.
This means that very quickly you are watering dead seed.
Our conclusion:
Irrigation systems are unreliable because they rely on water pressure and the quality of the water. They frequently clog up and the cheaper sprinkler stems are unreliable and dont work afer a few weeks.
Solution:
Do what the Spanish do... Undegroung black irrigation tubing. Dont rely on water presure, just gravity.
How
to fix lawn low water pressure irrigation system pitfall (1)... 
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