# Rainbird Tech Spec Radius vs Real World Spacing



## DTC (Jun 8, 2018)

How far can you space your Rainbird 5000 PRS heads? I came up with a spacing of 33' and ran it by a local installer's DIY service and they said they "would never space them that far apart. we would space them about 20-25' apart".

Is 33' really a problem at 45 psi? There's literally no data in the Rainbird spec that mentions 20' for the 5000 PRS, but is that the better idea?


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## JohnnyBGreen (Apr 19, 2021)

You could probably space them more like 28-30ft apart, to accommodate for any short-radii due to wind and such. 
With my irrigation renovation the past year, as long as the zone pressure is good, and even when adding some pressure regulating heads, the real life radius performance for the nozzles seem to be pretty darn close to the paper specs.


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## northwoods-lawn (Sep 9, 2020)

When I did the in-ground system last year, I temporarily hooked up all the heads per zone and turned the system on. Then measured from head to head to determine the distance of throw. I checked each nozzle for gpm and distance. From there was able to determine the final distance from head to head.


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## DTC (Jun 8, 2018)

northwoods-lawn said:


> When I did the in-ground system last year, I temporarily hooked up all the heads per zone and turned the system on. Then measured from head to head to determine the distance of throw. I checked each nozzle for gpm and distance. From there was able to determine the final distance from head to head.


That's a great approach. I'm going to give that a shot to get the spacing distances. Thanks!

How'd you check the nozzle GPM? did you let each head in the zone run while somehow collecting water from any specific nozzle/head?


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