Landscaping Questions Thread
 

For some reason, I recently decided I would not tolerate half of my lawn being moss and clover this year, with brown grass during the summer. With much effort, I have killed and raked out the moss, bored under the concrete pathway, and spot seeded the lawn.

My front lawn is roughly an L-shape, and I have an impact sprinkler that does a poor job of reaching all areas equally, and it hits the fence at the opposite end. I'm contemplating installing popups, but I want to put in as little effort as possible to achieve ok results.

I want to avoid tapping into the water main, and instead just run off the faucet. The yard isn't big; probably less than 1000 sq/ft. Could I just run 1/2" pipe from the facet to 2 popup sprinklers? What about 4 sprinklers? I'm trying to minimize cost, effort, and the annual back-flow preventer inspection.

I'm not even sure I should give this any effort because I'll likely be renting the house out in 2 years. My first choice was to install artificial turf, but I can't get the wife to sign off on it.

Anyhow, I'd like to hear your 2 cents.

I've had really good results with drip in my garden. For a thousand square foot lawn I'd go that way. Check out Drip Depot, I've gotten good stuff at good prices during their fall sales.

I run drip to everything else, but I want something rugged that can be run over by a lawn mower without being damaged. Besides, we don't pay attention to water use in Oregon; it's practically free! Maybe the sun will transport some of that evaporation to AZ.

I'll set the timer for 4am to minimize evap.

How does drip get even coverage in a large area anyhow? I can't even get drip to water 6" away from the drip source.

You're in (west of the Cascades) Oregon? You formerly had moss growing where you want a lawn? Just why the heck do you think you even NEED to water?

Drip doesn't have to be about minimizing water usage, it's also an effective irrigation setup that you can buy pieces for on a small scale. Drip lines, misters and sprayers can all be a part of it. I could have just dropped a few oscillating sprinklers around, but I'd rather have a neater setup.

What about a "walking" sprinkler? It would need to be turned around each day for the next day's lap but you might be able to make a track to have it follow the L shaped yard. Or what about a couple of the sprinkler hoses that are flat with holes punched in it that shoot up and out? Neither of these methods can be mowed over but unless you have a fence and mount sprinklers on the top, I don't know of a system that can be mowed over.

Walking type: http://www.amazon.com/Nelson-1865-Ra...ctor+sprinkler

Hose type: Amazon.com : Andrews 50-Foot 2 Tube Sprinkler Hose 10-12348 : Garden Hoses : Patio, Lawn & Garden

I thought the plan was to not do any trenching? I should have said "I don't know of a non-buried sprinkler system that can be mowed over".

Edit: I re-read and saw you said you already have some and want to put out as little effort. My fault, disreguard my statements.

I should specify that I would like to expend as little cumulative effort as possible. If I could do murderous labor for 2 days straight and never have to touch a yard again; I would do it. Trenching is no problem, I'm just trying to avoid having to do a professional PVC install with 8 heads surrounding the lawn. If I can get away with somewhat weak spray and uneven coverage with just 2 heads, but it's good enough, that's what I'm looking for. Basically, I just want someone to tell me it's ok to do it wrong because I have perfectionist tendencies (which is another way of saying I'll never get around to it).

After my 14.5 hr work shift on 2 hrs of sleep, I stopped by the hardware store and picked up some misters and micro sprayers and modified my drip system to better cover the area and conserve water.

Not from around here, eh?

Pacific NW is surprisingly hard to grow a decent lawn... Weeds and moss are rampant, and in July and August the grass gets baked to a crisp.

I'm putting my house up for sale soon so I'm going through the same steps as Redpoint5. Moss is mostly gone, reseeded the lawn. Still lots of weeds though. My house has an automatic lawn sprinkler system.... that doesn't work anymore. I've been having endless electrical problems with the wiring to the valves and the controller itself.

My new house doesn't have a sprinkler system, so I've been looking into this too. I was thinking about building a simple PVC/sprinkler that just hooks up to a faucet, but will probably just get one of these kits:
Rain Bird 32ETI Easy To Install Automatic Sprinkler System
Either way, that would eliminate the wiring headache I'm currently having and be considerably cheaper.

I would think most houses could manage four popups on a single line. But, how many sprinklers depends on the available pressure and water flow at your house.