Establishing Zones

Since most homes do not have adequate water supply (GPM) to water to water the entire lawn at one time, a zone distribution system must be used. A zone is a group of sprinkler heads connected to one pipe, controlled by a single valve that permits watering one zone at a time. The number of sprinkler heads used on a zone is determined by the amount of water available from your source and the water used by your sprinkler heads.

For example, is 15 GPM is available, you could use four impact heads on each zone with each sprinkler using 3 GPM for a total of 12 GPM. If half circle heads are used and each uses 1.5 GPM, then a total of 8 sprinklers could be used on each zone. It is advisable to have some reserve flow available when sizing your zones to allow for flow and pressure fluctuations they may occur at different times of the day.

Once you have noted the flow rate of each head on your graph paper, start grouping the heads by zone. Make sure that different type of sprinklers are not in the same zone, i.e. rotors, pop-ups, impulse, bubblers, shrub heads, etc. This is because each type of sprinkler head requires different amounts of water and pressure to perform properly. By mixing heads, it is possible to cause other heads in the same zone to operate poorly or not at all. For example, you might make the front lawn one zone with pop-ups, the front shrubbery area another zone with spray heads and the back yard a third zone with impulse sprinklers.