OT: anyone know about water and irrigation?

[AnotherNovaLion]

So many years ago I had an irrigation sprinkler installed to water the lawn. Over the years the nature of the yard has changed. For instance I put in a batting cage and turned that zone off since there was no longer grass.

I finally learned how to make changes to the irrigation system and I took the one inch poly pipe that had been used for the grass where the batting cage is and I ran it so it could water some of my wife’s plants. I installed 6 tees to connect 1/2 inch switch pipe which allow me to install 6 sprinklers to water the flowers. However when I tested it last night with the 1/2 inch switch pIpe which will be attached to the sprinklers there seemed to be insufficient water for the last 2-3 connections.

Thoughts?? Should I just install 3 sprinklers? Is there something else that can be done? There are other zones I have in which there are 6 sprinklers attached with no issue but perhaps there is more than one pipe run to get the water to those 6 sprinklers?

tia

 

[91Joe95]

Did you install valves on all the pipes? If so, throttle back the sprinklers first in line. One way or another you need to balance the water flows. The first sprinkler takes water away from the second and so on. You could get smaller sprinklers at the front, only run a couple of sprinklers at a time, etc.

 

[BW Lion]

If you flow-tested the system using only the six (6) 1/2" swing joints without the spray heads installed, I would fully expect there to be insufficient flow downstream. The spray heads need to be installed to ensure proper operation (equalization of pressure in the lines)

If you did test with spray heads installed, did you first flush out the line (without the valves installed)? You might have left dirt in the line from your installation that immediately flowed to the end of the line upon start-up and is plugging the last 2-3 heads. Remove the spray nozzles, clean/backflush the plastic filter screens and flush the line before reinstalling and testing.

They make spray nozzles of varying output (gals per minute) which you can install at the beginning of your line so that those heads don't rob the ones further downstream if you continue to have a problem with unequal flow rates.