[ajmikola]

So I had an irrigation system put in when we built our house. I don't feel like really soaks the soil and takes probably an hour to fill up a tuna can (if not more). On top of that I have a lot of waste of water as a few of the rotors cross the sidewalk, so the sidewalk gets a ton of water as well.
I have messed around with hand watering with a nice wand sprayer and (in my opinion, no science or numbers), it feels like I can really water the yard well in much less time than my irrigation system.

Was wondering if anyone had any experience with this?

 

[jayhawk]

My comment is those in my hood who had irrigation on build, usually are rotor based and doing stupid things like blasting mailboxes, tree trunks....from the 22" beauty strip (not as wide as yours). We're talking 1/4 acre...2k-3k of actual grass so a rotor, big throws not really needed.
It's s similar conundrum I feel as in homebuilding ....volume vs custom. The more you know about building science the more aggravated you become with your non custom built home

 

[ABC123]

What time of day are you watering?

 

[ajmikola]

What time of day are you watering?

I've experimented with watering almost at all times of day except mid afternoon and night time.

 

[ajmikola]

My comment is those in my hood who had irrigation on build, usually are rotor based and doing stupid things like blasting mailboxes, tree trunks....from the 22" beauty strip (not as wide as yours). We're talking 1/4 acre...lower 3k sq ft house (memory failing on foundation width -> wine) so rotor, big throws not really needed.
It's s similar conundrum I feel as in homebuilding ....volume vs custom. The more you know about building science the more aggravated you become with your non custom built home

I just feel like I could get out there and hand water the lawn much better than my irrigation system.

And a big +1 to the "custom builder" comment. I'm 36 and this is my first home build, I thought (idiotically and mistakenly so) that my house would be more "quality" than the big box builders. Alas I was wrong.
If my builder would have spent a freaking ounce on my lawn, it would be 10x better. But this rant is for another day....

 

[GrassDaddy]

You need to find out what rotors are in there now and go from there. many of then have different nozzles. some put out more water at a time than others. some shoot farther. some can be adjusted on the rotor.

Once you know which rotor you can look up the spec sheet and see. BTW it takes an hour per zone for my irrigation to water for comparison.

 

[Jericho574]

I'm in the same boat...I have a head (tunneled under sidewalk) on the landing strip that shoots 180* to hit each side as well as the lawn across the sidewalk but the sidewalk gets drenched. Also in another zone I have some 180* pop-ups that shoot 4-5' too far in one direction. If I lower the distance, then I won't have head to head coverage on the other directions. Then of course there's the backyard that's rectangle shaped so the fence obviously gets nailed. Short of having a ridiculously customized system or a perfectly shaped yard, I'm not too sure it's possible to not have waste.

It takes my rotaries an hour for 1", and 40 mins for the pop-ups. It would take 4-6 hrs to do it by hand. Of course, having hard Georgia clay, my soil cannot absorb 1" in an hour so I set my system to run 2 cycles- once at 5am (50% of the total mins) and then again at 7am.

 

[Fronta1]

Check my math but I think it takes 83 cu ft of water to provide 1000 sq ft with 1" of water. So imagine filling up a 4.5' x 4.5' x 4.5' pool with water with, say, 3 sprinkler heads. That's how long it takes.

Cu ft = h x w x l = 1000 x 1/12 = 83

 

[ajmikola]

Check my math but I think it takes 83 cu ft of water to provide 1000 sq ft with 1" of water. So imagine filling up a 4.5' x 4.5' x 4.5' pool with water with, say, 3 sprinkler heads. That's how long it takes.

Cu ft = h x w x l = 1000 x 1/12 = 83

Thats quite a bit.

 

[Ware]

...I have messed around with hand watering with a nice wand sprayer and (in my opinion, no science or numbers), it feels like I can really water the yard well in much less time than my irrigation system.

I think it takes over 623 gallons to put down 1" of water over a thousand square feet. You would need to measure the flow rate of the setup you're using, but let's just say it's 5gpm... you would need to water over 2 hours per thousand square feet to get that inch of water. I think it would be hard to outperform even a poorly designed irrigation system with a hose end sprayer.