On 6/23/2016 12:58 PM, Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
Not that I'm really thinking of redesigning our sprinkler system, but out of
curiosity I picked up RainBird's questionnaire/layout sheets to send in for
them to design an appropriate system, and one thing struck me as very odd:

One is supposed to measure both the water pressure and the rate of water flow
from a spigot, e.g., time how long it takes to fill a 5-gallon bucket. BUT is
ours the only house where the existing sprinkler system is fed from a 1-1/2-in
PVC pipe run from immediately after the meter, whereas the outside spigots are
fed through 1/2-in. pipe beyond the pressure regulator?

What useful information would the pressure and flow rate measured at one of our
spigots provide?

Here, most homes feed their irrigation system off of the household water
supply -- a 3/4" line from the meter to the house then, typically, 1/2"
pipe feeding the hose bibbs on the periphery of the house.

We run the 3/4" copper water line through a stop, then the master valve and
antisiphone device into a PRV (*just* for the irrigation system -- the house
has a separate PRV and stop), through a fine mesh/high volume filter into a
1" PVC that feeds the 19 valves + PRV's for each of the 19 zones (4 of these
are actually valve-controlled hose bibbs).

[The PVC feeds the irrigation system in two directions (i.e., completely
encircles the house) so the "far loads" don't suffer from drops in the
~250 ft run]