Thanks Brandon for the superb article.

I am installing my system now, and it is about 25% complete. The following are some issues that I have encountered so far:

(1) Unfortunately I was unable to find the Water Whiz flexible PVC pipe that you showed. In fact, my local Lowes and Home Depot do not sell underground sprinkler parts or accessaries. The only thing that I found in Lowes is some rolls of black "Poly" pipes, which require clamp type of fittings rather than the glue-on PVC fittings. Brandon do you have any opinion on using the Poly pipes? They are so much cheaper.

(2) I decided to buy flexible PVC pipes from flexpvc.com. The 3/4" pipe costs about $0.80/ft; but with shipping it becomes about $1/ft. Delivery took only a couple of days; however, they do not offer slower but cheaper shipping options. The pipes look good — strong and flexible.

(3) "Slotting" the lawn wasn’t quite as easy as expected, since my yard soil contains tons of rocks of all sizes starting at about 2 inches below surface. An L-shaped steel pry-bar turned out to be very efficient in doing the slot excavation. Without the pry bar, it would have been impossible to get the rocks out without severely damaging the lawn.

(4) I used Rain Bird 3500 series rotors for the most part. From what I gathered, they should be similar to your 32SA. The 3500 series rotor includes 8 nozzles of different sizes, each of which allows a different throw distance and flow rate. I found this feature very useful, especially in the beginning when I was not sure about the actual throw distance until I installed the first zone. Without this flexibility, it would have been hard to decide how far to space the rotors. Does the 32SA also have this feature?

(5) For a few locations where longer throw distances (30 feet /-)were needed, I used Rain Bird 5000 series rotors. My water pressure is pretty low … I think it is around 25 psi. So I had to be careful in using the 5000+ series since it requires larger flow rate. Generally I could not use more than two 5000+ series rotors per zone without sacrifising performance. The 5000 plus series also allows you to shut off individual rotors by just turning a screw from the top.

I have to go now, but will be back to add more as I progress. It’s been interesting, and thanks Brandon again for sharing this.