Chapter 13 Turf irrigation

There are several types of turf irrigation sprinklers. The original sprinklers were impact sprinklers invented by citrus farmer Orton Englehardt in Los Angeles in 1933. He sold the patent to Rainbird Sprinkler Company. The video below describes the mechanics of impact sprinklers.

Edwin Hunter invented the rotor sprinkler. As with impact sprinklers, they have a range of wetted diameters and flows, ranging from residential yards to golf courses.

Fixed spray heads water small residential turf areas. They have high flow rate and high application rate. This means that only a few sprinklers can be installed in each zone, and they might exceed the infiltration rate of the soil. As with rotors, they are always pop up sprinklers while impact sprinklers are not as suitable for the popup design.

Stream sprays are great sprinklers because they are inexpensive and water small areas at low application rates. They replace fixed spray sprinklers in cases where water flow rate is limited or soil infiltration rate is low. They have relatively uniform application rates.

Golf courses can spend in the range of $ 1 million per year on irrigation water. The reason for this is that they might pay municipal water prices for water. For many courses, even one brown spot is not acceptable, thus uniformity is extremely important. The following video describes some of the features of large golf course rotor sprinklers. Many golf course sprinklers have the valve in the head, which enables designers to place many sprinklers on one pipe lateral.

Sprinklers are generally spaced head to head in a square or triangular pattern. The equations for calculating precipitation rate are on the right. Except for spray heads, side sprinklers have twice the precipitation rate of full circle sprinklers, and corner sprinklers have 4 times the precipitation rate of full circle sprinklers. This is why side sprinklers and corner sprinklers should not be placed on the same zone.

Catch cans or catch cups check the uniformity of your sprinkler or the application rate vs. distance. This video shows how to place catch cups; however, it is normal to use 10 catch cups (cans) between sprinklers.

If you do not want to use the equations or catalog, then you can just use the catch can data to calculate application rate.