# Changing he-vans to MP Rotators or Rotor Heads?



## natedogg (8 mo ago)

Hey there!

I had new sod put in recently and was looking for some advice on the irrigation that was installed. Didn't really start looking into seriously caring for the lawn until most things were already done.

- The lawn is 66' x 21'.
- There are 20 total he-van heads, 16 he-van-12s and 4 he-van-15s down the middle.
- The heads are spaced roughly 11 feet apart along the outsides, but there is some variability. Some are closer to 10' and other are closer to 12' apart. 
- Similarly for the middle of the lawn, the four heads that run in the middle are not evenly spaced. Some are 9' from the edge on one side and 12' from the edge on the other side.
- Along with that, some of the heads are a little too far down, so I used some kap-its to make them a little taller and reach over the grass since I'm cutting at 3.5", was really wishing they had used 6" pop up bodies as opposed to 4".

Overall just having a little trouble with head to head coverage and not a ton of overspray with the uneven spacing, and he-van nozzles don't have very well defined edges.

Now that we are there, my question is, is it worth replacing the heads with something like MP Rotators, fixed spray heads (maybe cleaner edges?), or full on rotary nozzles?

I think my main issue is that because the heads can be anywhere from 10' to 12' apart, and the lawn is only 21' wide, that I would still run into issues with rotary nozzles because they might not make it head to head without overspraying the width.

The other option would be to get rid of the nozzles in the middle and maybe run MP2000s just on the edges? That way they might overspray each other a bit, but all of the overspray would at least make it into the lawn.

I did test out a few MP3000s but ran into the overspray issue. They also don't have well defined edges so I had to open them up to ~210 instead of 180, and 110 instead of 90, which results in a lot of wasted water. That's where maybe the MP2000s with overlap inside might work, because they would only need to reach 10'-12' head to head, but then could spin up past that once they get into the lawn.

Anyways welcome to any ideas on whether I should change it or just leave it all alone.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

If your drawing is to scale and accurate, then you are missing a head in the middle row. All the heads in the middle will need to shift so you can add an extra one.


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## natedogg (8 mo ago)

g-man said:


> If your drawing is to scale and accurate, then you are missing a head in the middle row. All the heads in the middle will need to shift so you can add an extra one.


Thanks, I was thinking that as I was drawing it all out. Unfortunately it will be quite difficult to dig it all out because there is gopher mesh underneath the lawn, as we have a serious gopher problem in the neighborhood.

With 15 foot spray heads in the middle they get coverage most of the way out, will try and make it work with those.

Would you just recommend leaving the whole thing with spray heads? Trying to find what will waste the least amount of water.


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