How to Map and Install Sprinklers With Timers and Waterlines

Draw a map of your yard on a piece of paper. Include every plant, ornament and outbuilding. Mark where the water meter and electrical outlet are on your house. Try to make the map as close to scale as possible.

Measure the water pressure coming from your sprinkler water pump. Attach a garden hose to the pump and attach a sprinkler pop-up nozzle to the open end of the hose. Turn the water pump on and use a tape measure to measure the radius of the spray.

Use the radius to decide how many sprinklers you need to provide full coverage for your lawn. Cut out paper circles representing the approximate size of the sprinkler spray and arrange the circles on your map until your yard is covered. Some overlap may be necessary to guarantee all the yard is covered.

Place flag markers in the yard at the points where the circles on the map are placed. The flag marker must be placed in the yard where the center of the circle is on the map. These markers are where the sprinkler pop-up nozzles belong.

Plug the water pump into the electrical outlet. Attach the hose to the pump.

Tie a loose string from the hose to each flag marker. Use this string to mark where to dig for the connecting hose for the sprinklers.

Dig 2-by-2-inch trenches under the strings, using a spade.

Insert garden hose, the length needed to connect the pump and the sprinklers, inside 1-inch diameter PVC pipe, also of the length needed to connect the pump to the sprinklers. For example, if the pump is 8 feet from the first sprinkler flag marker, the garden hose and the PVC pipe need to be 8-feet long.

Lay the PVC pipe into the trenches with the open end of the hose ending in the spot where the flag marker sits.

Screw a sprinkler pop-up nozzle to the ends of each garden hose. Set the pop-up nozzle so the sprinkler faces to the sky and pat dirt around the base to secure it into the space.

Fill in the trenches with the excavated dirt. Lay grass seeds on the dirt to grow the grass back.

Install a timer to each individual hose by screwing the end of the hose to the timer nozzle and adding a 6-inch garden hose section to connect the timer to the water pump.

Assign a time to start the sprinkler system on the timers. Stagger the individual hoses' start times to half-hour intervals.