Before you go out and whack one pop-up sprinkler in the middle of you square lawn, please read this before hand, otherwise you’ll read it afterwards when you’re looking for answers to the getting rid of the dry spots.
Spray Basics
Firstly know, sprinklers are designed to spray head-to head. That means for even coverage, any one sprinkler, needs the help of a second sprinkler spraying back at it for even coverage.
See this graph of a Hunter MP Rotators precipitation rate. Imagine a sprinkler in the bottom left of the graph, you’ll see much more water delivered to the nearest areas than to the furthest. But if you imagine one coming from the other direction, that line would almost be flat, meaning even coverage. And that’s the way you need to think. Head-to-Head.
Choose a Type of Sprinkler
We go to more detail into the available types of sprinklers in other guides. But as far as working out what type of sprinkler you need for a particular area, it’s all about how wide your area is at its thinnest. Sprinklers don’t spray oval arcs, they spray in circles. So if you have a 3m x 5m area, you don’t want a 5m sprinkler because it will overspray one side by 2m! So in this case you’ll be looking at sprinklers that spray distances up to 3m.
All types of sprinklers are specified by their spray radius, keep these in mind when drawing your plan.
Plan it Out
With Head-to-Head in mind, draw a plan of your garden then you can work out where your sprays need to be.
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The critical points on a plan are the corners. Draw a quarter pattern sprinkler in each corner. Using a compass, draw an arc (using the specs mentioned above) showing the sprinkler’s watering pattern.
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If the quarter heads will not spray each other (head-to-head spacing), place heads along the perimeters. Draw these sprinklers’ watering patterns.
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Now look to see if the perimeter heads will be spraying across the area to the heads on the other side. If they do not, add full circle heads in the middle.
