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Watering the New Lawn

2006.05.29

Now that the seeding was done, all that remained was to set up some sprinklers and water the lawn.  I had purchased a couple of the little ones that have a spike you drive into the ground, and then the head moves back and forth.  But I had held off until now really deciding what I would need.

So I made a run to Lowes to look over their selection and make some decisions.  I picked up a few fifteen-foot sections of hose, and a couple cheap oscillating fan-spread sprinklers.  Some weeks ago I had purchased a digital watering timer which could handle up to four times a day.

My plan was to hook up all these sprinklers on one long run, and then set up the timer, so that the lawn would be watered four times a day for the first week, then twice a day the next week, and so forth.  (The timer is not sophisticated enough to make those transitions, but that would be an easy thing for me to change on the weekends.)

I set up three sprinklers along the chain, and decided to give it a test.  Instead of the glorious fountains of water that I expected, I got little more than a dribble out of the last sprinkler in the chain, and not much more than that out of the other two.

Well, it seems that my water pressure is so pathetic, it can’t even run three sprinklers at the same time.

I changed to a shorter section of hose, and just one of the oscillating fan sprinklers out in the middle of the side yard.  Even with this minimal setup, it only covered about a 25-foot section of the yard, even though the sprinkler is allegedly capable of watering “up to” 1500 square feet or something.  Maybe if you hooked it up to a fire hydrant.

So much for my plans of automated watering.  It looks like I will have to manually move one (and only one) sprinkler around the yard to get everything watered.  At best, I can only water twice a day, and that assumes spending some time in the morning and going into work late.  Get up earlier?!

Nothing like ending the day in frustration.  Despite the nominal uneven grade and being completely worn out, I was feeling pretty good after I finished seeding.  Then came this watering fiasco.  Grrrr.

2006.05.30

This morning I returned the yard roller to Interstate Rentals, and then set about watering the lawn with an oscillating sprinkler.  Since the lawn is basically “C” shaped or “U” shaped, depending on your viewpoint, and since the one sprinkler on a 50-foot hose will only cover about a 25-foot-long area, I had to move the sprinkler four times to cover everything.  I didn’t really know how long to leave it in each position, and rather than doing something scientific like sticking a can out there and measuring the water depth, I just guessed about 10 minutes inbetween moving the sprinkler.  So, it took me almost an hour to water the lawn, mostly spent standing around twiddling my thumbs.  I noted that the oscillating sprinkler doesn’t really cover the entire area, there tends to be some long strips that don’t get very wet.

After watering the lawn and running some errands, I headed downtown to the office in time for lunch.  Obviously I can’t keep that schedule every day, but I guess I’ll have to go in late the rest of this week and work through lunch or something.  Why can’t I have something like 80 PSI water pressure, it sure would make my life easier.  I mean, you can always reduce the pressure if you need to…

After work, I went to Lowes and bought one of those John Deer tractor traveling sprinklers.  If you’ve never seen one of these things, it uses the water pressure to turn some gears that not only turn the sprinkler arms around, but also turn the rear wheels of the tractor.  The front wheels straddle the hose, which you lay out in a path, and the tractor follows the hose, doubling back until it reaches a little plastic ramp that you’ve set out, which makes it stop forward motion and water spraying.  Anyway, it’s a nifty little invention that’s probably 30 years old or more, yet they still wanted $70 for the thing!

I also bought a 125-foot hose, because in my ever-growing collection of garden hoses, I didn’t have anything longer than 50 feet.

Back home, I assembled the traveling sprinkler and laid out the new hose, which was putting up a persistent resistance to laying flat on the lawn.  In the instructions for the sprinkler, they advised that this was intended to be used for established lawns, not new lawns.  But undaunted, I decided to try it anyway.  I set up the sprinkler in the front yard, and turned on the water.  After making some adjustments to the arms to determine the diameter of the throw, I let it run.

And then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.  After half an hour, it had moved maybe 15 feet, and that was in “high” gear.  Meanwhile, the yard was completely saturated, there were arc-shaped ruts, seed had been scattered about, and there were thousands of little spots of mud all over the porch, the plants, and the sidewalk.

So I shut off the water and removed the tractor sprinkler.  Hopefully they will let me return the traveling sprinkler and get my money back.

After that, I set about watering the rest of the lawn with a spray nozzle on the hose.  Despite being the most labor-intensive, I think this is actually the least time-consuming, most effective, and most efficient way to water the lawn.

2006.06.04

Thursday we had some good rain, which hopefully helped make up for my lack of watering.  I’ve tried to get out and water in the mornings, and always water when I get home from work.  Looks like we’ll have some rain tomorrow too, so that’s good.

I’ve gone back to using the oscillating sprinkler, but instead of laying it out in the middle and sweeping both ways, I’ve set it to only sweep one direction, and I’ve been placing it along the paved edges.  This seems more efficient, and also means I don’t have to walk out on the lawn.