What is the Difference Between Rotary Head and Rotary Nozzle

On the surface, when setting up a zone it doesn’t seem to make a difference. Both are speced at .7 in/hr unless you have a custom nozzle. But in the smart cycle section there is a difference between the max time each can run without runoff. I don’t understand the distinction you are making and would like to.

@Tracy, good morning! You bring up a great point. On the surface these two nozzles appear to be the same, but that’s far from reality.

A rotary head usually rotates 45-360 degrees on a central axis point and emits a single source/stream of water in one direction. As such, the head provides more water to a single source at once, but the frequency at which the water is delivered is limited to how fast the entire head and turn back and forth. An example of a rotary head can be found here.

On the other hand is the rotary nozzle which is a hybrid of a pop-up/fixed sprinkler head and a rotary head in that it outputs multiple streams of water, over a set coverage area. By design, a rotary nozzle is very efficient at water delivery/distribution and help to eliminate run-off as compared to a the pop-up/fixed sprinkler head. An example of a rotary nozzle can be found here.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions related to nozzles. I’d be happy to geek out over them with you :smile:

Hi @emil, on this topic, I just noticed that the rotary nozzle in the app doesn’t correspond very well to the Hunter MP-Rotator product (0.40 in/hr). Would love to see the MP-Rotator as one of the predefined nozzle options. Wonder if MP-Rotator users are under-watering their lawn if the software thinks they’re getting 0.7in/hr when they’re only getting 0.4in/hr. I’ve created a custom nozzle for my MP-Rotator, so not an issue for me, but I’m thinking not all your users are going to go check the precip rate specs for their nozzles like I did. :slight_smile:

I think you can define a custom head…that should solve the problem?

Hi @ramblinwreck, thanks for brining this up. We looked across the entire industry at all manufacturers and tried to find the average precipitation rate for each nozzle. Obviously this will be off more for some then others. Hunter’s MP-Rotator are well known for their low flow rates as you mentioned. We’re hoping to one day build in a library of nozzles into the app to better document this (and help users better fine tune their system). I can tell you it’s on our roadmap, but unfortunately I can’t give a specific timeframe for when we might have the project finished.

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