I have 4 zones: flowerbed, front yard, sides, and back yard.
Flowerbed has 10, Pro-Spray Hunter nozzles, spanning 300 sqft
Sides have 11, Pro-Spray Hunter nozzles, spanning 1214 sqft.
Front yard has 5, PGP Hunter rotor head nozzles, spanning 1238 sqft
Back yard has 9, PGP Hunter rotor head nozzles, spanning 3672 sqft.
Main reason for this topic is I did a watering this morning has noticed that even those most of my backyard is flat, the last 3 to 4 feet take a dip down and back up over half a foot or so above the level yard. Somewhat hard to explain but inevitably what happens is there is an area that accumulates water that can run off from the hill.
The only things I know about the nozzles are they are PGP Hunter rotor heads and Pro-Spray Hunter nozzles. The Pro-Spray heads look like the fixed spray heads in this support article: http://support.rachio.com/article/264-choosing-nozzle and naturally the rotor heads look like the rotor heads in the same support article. I can’t find a part number or any part of the nozzle to know what GPM per hour number I should reference for the PR settings.
I’ve realized there probably isn’t enough information here. I noticed Hunter breaks their equipment up into colors and different GPM’s based on how it was adjusted and how far they spray… Catch cups may be a way to go because I didn’t set them up… but I do know now the front and back yard have blue, PGP-ADJ rotor heads and I’ve found both green and a yellow color (maybe brown) Pro-Spray nozzles in the flower bed and sides.
Even having the specs isn’t that accurate since pressure and efficiency is going to be extremely different for all installations.
As far as I know, a catch cup test is probably the best way to get in./hr and efficiency. This is a great tool once it’s done.
I know other people have run their system and have access to a water meter. That will get you most of the data you need if you just use default efficiency (I think we default to 80%).
Once you have the information you can create a custom nozzle
Pictures would be cool. The picture you paint in my head means you are always going to accumulate water because the water is going to run off from the slopes into the middle.
So I’ll probably change my mind but set the zone"s slope to that of this dip.
Here are some pictures of the back yard… Hopefully, this shows the dip… For all the new posts readers, I’ve set this up as flat but may consider changing the slope because of the last 3 to 4 feet of the back yard.
Just get the GPM at the meter and ignore the number of heads. It will get you a good first estimate. Check the meter reading, run the zone, check the meter. I ran mine for 3 minutes and divided by 3 to reduce the error.
And no negative to using slope setting except longer water time. Not necessarily a bad thing, even on flat ground.
The slope setting splits up the cycle and adds a pause in the middle. The steeper the slope, the more pause and/or more cycles it splits a watering into. This allows soak time.
