subject: Sarasota Sprinkler Repair - What is 0 Coverage? [print this page] Sarasota Sprinkler Repair - What is 0 Coverage?
I see many Sarasota sprinkler repair contractors advertise "We Provide One Hundred Percent Sprinkler Coverage For Your Lawn." What does that mean? A drop of water will hit every part of your yard? So what? A quality sprinkler system will provide relatively even coverage for your lawn.
As a Sarasota sprinkler repair specialist and a professional in sprinkler system troubleshooting, I see landscapes everyday that provide "100% coverage" yet the irrigation design is terrible. What matters is uniform coverage for areas that have the same water requirements. In a simplistic way, for every ten drops of water that hit this area, you want at least six to seven drops hit that area. In technical terms it is referred to as DuLQ (distribution uniformity, lowest quarter). This ratio of the evenness of coverage is then expressed as a percentage.
One hundred percent evenness of coverage, or a better term, uniform precipitation, is impossible to achieve. Evaporation, climatic conditions, soil conditions, pressure fluctuations and other considerations make it impossible for every drop of water that is delivered by the sprinklers to end up in the target root profile. However, careful planning and design can keep water waste to a minimum.
Here are some benchmarks to shoot for:
Rotor zones 65-70%
Spray zones 50-65%
Drip zones 85-95%
For example, I recently did some Sarasota sprinkler repair at a home that had rotor and spray heads piped on the same zone. Spray heads (sometimes called "fixed sprays") generally speaking emit three times as much water over their given area per minute (precipitation rate) as rotor heads (the ones that turn). This mixing of rotors and sprays on the same zone is bad enough. When you add to the situation the fact that the sprays were all in the shade watering mature shrubs, and the rotors were all in full sun watering turf, what you have is a disastrous design. In order to provide the correct amount of water to the turf, the shrubs in the shade, which did not require any water, were being flooded. Yet, this irrigation system provided "100% coverage."
When searching for an irrigation contractor to install your sprinklers, after the salesman promises "100% coverage", ask him if he can give you a rough estimate of the uniformity of application per zone. If his says with a big smile "100%", or even worse "Huh?", keep looking.
Craig Borglum CIC/CID/CLIA is a Certified and Licensed Irrigation Specialist and EPA Water Sense Partner in South Florida.
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