# Rotary Nozzles vs. Rotor Sprayers



## Ecks from Tex

I'm comparing the two watering philosophies in general; less interested in the brand names. I'm very close to digging up zones in the yard and retrofitting my sprinkler system for better coverage (moving heads, adding new zones, replacing heads). I have a big yard.

My plan was to install rotor sprinklers, but I have seen a ton of people on this forum who opted for rotary nozzles for better coverage. Can anyone give some insight on your system and why you chose it (or if you didn't choose it like me which you would prefer/what you don't like about yours)? Price is not an issue for me because I am doing it myself and not doing the entire system at once, so it can be done slowly over time.


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## Greendoc

How far apart are your existing Rotor heads? I frequently see Rotor heads misused. They are for covering radiuses of 35-50 ft and under the conditions of a very uniform square or triangular pattern placement. Every head in a zone had better be nozzled for the same radius. Deviation from that often leads to problems with uniformity of coverage. Those issues show up when a lawn is on a restricted watering time and schedule. Unless someone is watering a bowling green or football field sized and shaped lawn, I prefer rotary nozzles because they adjust to differing radiuses and arcs. The screw in front of the Rotor orifice shortens the radius while causing that individual head to put down way more water in the area covered by that head vs other heads in that zone. When installing the orifices in a Rotor one had better be referring to the manufacturer's tech sheet concerning the GPM and radius of each size of orifice. This becomes a thing and a problem when a lawn is not set to be grossly overwatered. If someone is setting their irrigation to overwater, coverage problems are not often visible. Set a system to apply an inch of water per week in one or two on cycles, defects show up as dried out areas in between flooded areas. Mixing the non moving fan spray nozzles with any kind of rotary or rotor type head is also troublesome. The typical fan spray nozzle puts 1.6 inches of water per hour. A rotor puts out 0.5 inches per hour. The Hunter MP Rotator nozzles put out 0.4 inches per hour.


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## Ecks from Tex

Greendoc said:


> How far apart are your existing Rotor heads? I frequently see Rotor heads misused. They are for covering radiuses of 35-50 ft and under the conditions of a very uniform square or triangular pattern placement. Every head in a zone had better be covering the same radius. Deviation from that often leads to problems with uniformity of coverage. Those issues show up when a lawn is on a restricted watering time and schedule. Unless someone is watering a bowling green or football field sized and shaped lawn, I prefer rotary nozzles because they adjust to differing radiuses. The screw in front of the Rotor orifice shortens the radius while causing that individual head to put down way more water in the area covered by that head vs other heads in that zone.


All of my heads were spray when i bought the house. There were huge gaps in coverage (not even waterline to waterline) in some areas. In those areas, I added roto sprayers just to get a little better coverage in the interim while I rehabbed the lawn. My system is on its own city meter so I have high pressure and do not have issues with running different style heads, even though I know it causes uneven watering. None of it is evenly watered right now.

I am going to have to re-run lines and redo much of the system. I will keep the mainline as is, which I believe is actually looped around the house (still in the process of confirming that), but I will likely end up running new laterals and re-sodding the damaged areas.

It rains often where I live and we have a huge water source. I'll never have restricted water. But, I have a pretty needy lawn that still requires weekly watering.

I am strongly considering rotary nozzles. To do it, I would have to run new laterals around the exterior of my lawn zones. I have the laterals in place for the center heads, just need to get better coverage around the perimeter.


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## Greendoc

Rotary nozzles are often the best solution for spray heads not spaced correctly. One of the banes of my existence are installers that do not install spray heads spaced head to head less 2 ft to account for wind. The numbers you see in the Hunter, Rainbird, and Toro catalogs are gotten from running the heads in a sealed building. Not in a yard with a 20 MPH wind blowing.


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## Ecks from Tex

Interesting. That's what I have been thinking too, so thanks for affirming I'm on the right path.

I'm actually planning to install 6 inch rotary pop ups in lieu of the 4 inch in some places. My grass is 4 inches tall and can restrict spray.

Do you know anything about pressure regulated sprinkler bodies? I've been considering going to pressure regulated sprinklers when I make the jump, since the Rainbird R-VAN 6 inch pop ups have it as an option for the sprinkler bodies


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## Greendoc

Do you have severe changes in elevation, such as some heads on the same zone on top of a hill and some on flat ground? If not, pressure regulated heads are not really needed. I do not use them unless that is the situation. Otherwise, I do like 6 inch pop up bodies in St Augustine. With a reel low lawn, the 2 inch is plenty.


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## Ecks from Tex

Greendoc said:


> Do you have severe changes in elevation, such as some heads on the same zone on top of a hill and some on flat ground? If not, pressure regulated heads are not really needed. I do not use them unless that is the situation. Otherwise, I do like 6 inch pop up bodies in St Augustine. With a reel low lawn, the 2 inch is plenty.


I have one area that has elevation changes of over 20 degrees but the rest is either flat or on a small slope.


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## Greendoc

when this matters is if incoming pressure is marginal. Otherwise, if you have adequate line pressure, MP Rotators work well without the regulated bodies.


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## Ecks from Tex

Alright man you convinced me and probably saved me a lot of money. Thanks for your input I appreciate it


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## Greendoc

No worries. One of my most frequently performed operations when I take over maintenance of a lawn is to convert spray pop up sprinklers to MP Rotators and/or remove PGP, 5004, 3500, or PGJ Rotors to replace with MP Rotators. #getyourirrigationright


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## g-man

One of the things I like about the MP is the low precipitation rates. On my clay soil, it takes a while to absorb water. so the low rate aids in avoiding runoff.


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## Ecks from Tex

g-man said:


> One of the things I like about the MP is the low precipitation rates. On my clay soil, it takes a while to absorb water. so the low rate aids in avoiding runoff.


But doesn't it help with deep watering if you have higher rates? I have bad clay soil as well, but I'm working to amend the soil and a sand top dress next year could help that along with core areation.

I have this belief that I don't get a very deep watering even when I try because I can't get enough "high quality H2O" on the ground quick enough. Another issue is I have 11 zones and will probsbly expand another 2 zones next year, so I don't want to be watering all day. I'm definitely open to learning a better way, this is just where my mind is at right now based on what I "know"


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## Greendoc

It actually does not help if water is poured on faster than it can go down. The other good part about MP Rotators is that in many cases, if a system is originally zoned and configured for pop up spray heads, twice as many MPs can be running at once. There have been instances where I have gone into systems where there were many zones each running less than 10 spray heads and I have been able to eliminate valves by tying in 2 zones into one.


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## g-man

Ecks from Tex said:


> But doesn't it help with deep watering if you have higher rates? I have bad clay soil as well, but I'm working to amend the soil and a sand top dress next year could help that along with core areation.
> 
> I have this belief that I don't get a very deep watering even when I try because I can't get enough "high quality H2O" on the ground quick enough. Another issue is I have 11 zones and will probsbly expand another 2 zones next year, so I don't want to be watering all day. I'm definitely open to learning a better way, this is just where my mind is at right now based on what I "know"


You want to the soil soil at moisture level to 100% for the root depth of your lawn (ie. 6in). The plant will use the water and you want to replace it (refill) once it is 50% capacity. This promotes deeper roots. A clay soil means one that has very small particles. When the soil is dry the particles get close to each other and creates some weak bonds. This removes the room for water molecules or air to go thru. A low precipitation rate allows the water to find a path and saturate the soil. On sand you have the opposite problem, since the particles are bigger, there is too much room for the water to go thru.

Like green doc said, you could merge zones on MP since each head uses less gpm. Also, a smart controller will water each zone as needed based on the sun/shade of it. For me it is very rare when all the zones are watered the same day.


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## Ecks from Tex

@Greendoc and @g-man thanks for your input. So do you believe that with clay soil I would be better off going with the MP Rotators at a rate of .4 as opposed to the Rain Bird R-VAN at a rate of .6 precip?

I definitely have zones I am going to merge, but likely will not eliminate zones as I am adding drip irrigation zones. I have huge beds that are watered by extremely wasteful shrub sprays, and it takes a huge toll on my water bill during the summer months.

Right now the entire system is manual. I definitely am going to replace those manual valves with solenoid automatic valves as I work on each zone. I have several clusters of valves around the property, so my plan is to move them closer to each other and install automatics as I work on each zone. At the same time, I'm coming up with a schematic to run wiring to those locations. It's going to be tough, but doable. I have an external shop that I plan to run everything to, where I can install a Rachio (I guess Gen 3 if everyone on here likes it when it comes out) and hopefully a personal weather station since it rains here so often. I'm wanting to automate a lot in my house and the irrigation is the first on the list.


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## g-man

MP and R-Van are very similar and will work with clay soils. There are other techniques to deal with clay (or hills) that the Rachio uses. It applies water to a zone for ~30min then it lets it soak (waits 10-20min or moves to another zone) and goes back to it.


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## Ecks from Tex

g-man said:


> MP and R-Van are very similar and will work with clay soils. There are other techniques to deal with clay (or hills) that the Rachio uses. It applies water to a zone for ~30min then it lets it soak (waits 10-20min or moves to another zone) and goes back to it.


I cant wait to finally get the smart controller


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## SCGrassMan

Ecks from Tex said:


> g-man said:
> 
> 
> 
> MP and R-Van are very similar and will work with clay soils. There are other techniques to deal with clay (or hills) that the Rachio uses. It applies water to a zone for ~30min then it lets it soak (waits 10-20min or moves to another zone) and goes back to it.
> 
> 
> 
> I cant wait to finally get the smart controller
Click to expand...

I have a gen 2 Rachio I'm going to be selling soon if interested - <2 months old


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## FuzzeWuzze

Greendoc said:


> when this matters is if incoming pressure is marginal. Otherwise, if you have adequate line pressure, MP Rotators work well without the regulated bodies.


Good time for this thread to pop up, in my research looking at moving my sprays to rotary nozzles I've seen a lot of people say that high pressure causes the heads to spin too quickly and mist and or break easier? Which is why they recommend running their 40psi regulating bodies?

I mostly want to fix my street strips that are like 30x6, 50x6, and 70x6 long, even new side strip Rainbird spray nozzles spray like shit, misting everywhere and im constantly fighting one side not hitting the edge, turning it, which then makes the far side miss its edge even worse..i feel like 180 isnt enough and i need 185 degree's...but cant do radius sprays for obvious reasons...

My hope is the side strip rotary nozzles will not have this problem, but then my final problem is that no one makes end strip rotary nozzles only left/right corner which is not how my systems are laid out. I suppose i could redo the ends to be at the corners if necessary though. I lose so much water down the street and sidewalk it makes me angry.

For some reason none of the larger stores(HD/Lowes) sells rotary strip nozzles, only the radius ones. I want to try one out before I redo everything and commit to a few hundred $$ in nozzles, but cant find anywhere that isnt online to buy them or at a landscape contractor only store.


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## Ecks from Tex

SCGrassMan said:


> Ecks from Tex said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> g-man said:
> 
> 
> 
> MP and R-Van are very similar and will work with clay soils. There are other techniques to deal with clay (or hills) that the Rachio uses. It applies water to a zone for ~30min then it lets it soak (waits 10-20min or moves to another zone) and goes back to it.
> 
> 
> 
> I cant wait to finally get the smart controller
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I have a gen 2 Rachio I'm going to be selling soon if interested - <2 months old
Click to expand...

Dude I'd jump on that except I am pretty sure my design is going to take at least a year to install because I am DIY except trenching. I have a lot of drip systems to plan out the lawn irrigation is probably ready to roll. Although I'm still in the process of figuring out whether my mainline is looped or just two separate branches.

I'm going to post a thread on it journaling me renovation and showing my plans so maybe you guys can help me from screwing up the design. It's a pretty complex irrigation system because I have a large property and not only am I renovating to add zones but I'm also having to convert from manual to automatic valves.


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## Ecks from Tex

FuzzeWuzze said:


> Greendoc said:
> 
> 
> 
> when this matters is if incoming pressure is marginal. Otherwise, if you have adequate line pressure, MP Rotators work well without the regulated bodies.
> 
> 
> 
> Good time for this thread to pop up, in my research looking at moving my sprays to rotary nozzles I've seen a lot of people say that high pressure causes the heads to spin too quickly and mist and or break easier? Which is why they recommend running their 40psi regulating bodies?
> 
> I mostly want to fix my street strips that are like 30x6, 50x6, and 70x6 long, even new side strip Rainbird spray nozzles spray like s---, misting everywhere and im constantly fighting one side not hitting the edge, turning it, which then makes the far side miss its edge even worse..i feel like 180 isnt enough and i need 185 degree's...but cant do radius sprays for obvious reasons...
> 
> My hope is the side strip rotary nozzles will not have this problem, but then my final problem is that no one makes end strip rotary nozzles only left/right corner which is not how my systems are laid out. I suppose i could redo the ends to be at the corners if necessary though. I lose so much water down the street and sidewalk it makes me angry.
> 
> For some reason none of the larger stores(HD/Lowes) sells rotary strip nozzles, only the radius ones. I want to try one out before I redo everything and commit to a few hundred $$ in nozzles, but cant find anywhere that isnt online to buy them or at a landscape contractor only store.
Click to expand...

You should check out movingshrub's thread in this sub forum. I think they are discussing several issues that might be of help to you!


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## SCGrassMan

Well I did nothing DIY on my sprinkler system, and I'm paying the price, figuratively and literally right now. Definitely tag me in for the knowledge though. If you want the Rachio let me know - $150 shipped. The only reason I upgraded was for the wireless flow sensor because water is expensive here.


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## Ecks from Tex

SCGrassMan said:


> Well I did nothing DIY on my sprinkler system, and I'm paying the price, figuratively and literally right now. Definitely tag me in for the knowledge though. If you want the Rachio let me know - $150 shipped. The only reason I upgraded was for the wireless flow sensor because water is expensive here.


I will keep that in mind on the Rachio and I appreciate the offer.


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