How to Plan a Lawn Sprinkler System

Call your utility companies and request a dig consultation. They will send a service technician out to spot paint your yard to show you where you cannot dig.

Measure your yard's length and width using a measuring tape.

Multiply the yard's length by the yard's width to determine your yard's square footage.

Map your entire yard on graph paper with a pencil, indicating heavily planted areas that have trees, bushes and grass, as opposed to light areas that have just grass or just a bush. To maintain proper ratios, use one block on the graph paper to indicate one square foot in your yard.

Consult your sprinkler system's user manual for the sprinkling specifications such as "sprinkling distance," which indicates how far the water will spray, and the "coverage area," which indicates how many square feet the sprinkler will cover with each spray.

Mark "DND" on your graph paper to indicate "do-not-dig" spots.

Mark a small "s-h" on your graph where your "sprinkler head" should go, ensuring that the sprinkler head spray distance covers the lawn as well as any bushes or trees that require water on their leaves. If you have tall hedges or saplings, you might need to place the "s-h" right next to the bushes, so the water sprinkles high into the air and covers their leaves.

Divide the your yard's square footage by the coverage area of one sprinkler head using your calculator. For instance, if you have a 1,000-square-foot yard, and each sprinkler head covers 200 square feet, you need five sprinkler heads to adequately water your entire yard because 1,000 divided by 200 equals 5.

Mark your graph paper with enough "s-h" to cover your entire yard and all your bushes and trees. Ensure that you avoid all DND zones.

Connect the water-pressure gauge to a water hose.

Fill a 1-gallon bucket of water, recording the water pressure as indicated by the water-pressure gauge.

Match the sprinkler system to your water pressure. Most sprinkler systems require a minimum 20 pound per square inch water pressure. Some high-power sprinkler systems or efficiency systems require a 50 to 100 psi.

Time how long it takes to fill a 1-gallon bucket of water to get your gross flow rate using your watch.

Divide the GFR by 60 (seconds) to get the actual flow rate.

Match the sprinkler system's circuit to your AFR. The circuit must match the flow rate because it dictates how much water gets delivered during a set period of time.