# matching up sunny and shaded parts of a lawn



## beranes (Jun 12, 2021)

I've recently moved into a house in Southern California about 20 miles off of the coast with a preinstalled (Rachio controlled) irrigation system. The lawn is over 6K sq.ft. in a shape of a long rectangle, but the sides are not straight (curved around the hot tub, stairs, gazebo, etc.). The long side runs east-to-west with a slight down gradient toward the west side. The north-to-south run has a much steeper slope and the north side is in open sun, while the south side is shaded by tall trees with wide canopies (e.g. there are areas with live moss under some of those trees today even though it's been pretty hot for several weeks).

The lawn is serviced by three zones that, unfortunately, break the area east-to-west. This leaves the middle and the west zones with both shaded and sunny areas. Because of this and the slope, the higher sunny north side is dryer than the lower 
and shaded south side. I could tune Rachio to water to the needs of the north area, but this will obviously overwater the south. And being in Southern California, any overwatering is pretty expensive.

All three areas are set up with very old Orbit pop-ups (rotors and sprays). They are so old that the other day I was trying to clean one of them and pieces of the body just crumbled off. So, I want to replace them. Since re-zoning is not in the budget for the next couple of years, I want to try to differentiate water flow between the south and the north (i.e. give the north a bit more water coverage).

I'm finally getting to the question: which brand would be the best for this kind of a set up (where I actually don't want matched precipitation)? I was looking at RainBird's RVANs the other day. I like multi-streams because being on a hill side, the property is exposed to winds, so a lot of mist produced by other sprinkler types gets blown away. It looks like all R-VANs have matched precipitation rates, so I can't use them to set up a differentiation within a single zone. I'm going to look into Hunter's MP rotor next. But I would also appreciate some advice and guidance.


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

RVANS and MP rotators are going to be matched precipitation rate. I don't think you can change that. Traditional rotors (e.g. Hunter PGPs or Rainbird 5000s) will allow you to adjust precipitation rate by changing out the nozzles. What is the spacing between heads as that may limit what you can install?


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## BadDogPSD (Jul 9, 2020)

Perhaps mix & match the MP Rotators & RVANS? Put the RVANS where you need more water, and the MP's where you need less? RVAN's are about .62 inches per hour and MP's are around .42 inches per hour (both vary depending on configuration, square vs triangle).


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## Utk03analyst (Jun 8, 2019)

I have the same issue on one side of my lawn, it's about 15 by 75 and the first 20 feet get a lot of sun and the back 55 is between my house and the neighbor and gets mostly shade. I'm using hunter pgj rotors and have 4 gpm nozzles on the sunny area and 1.5 gpm nozzles on the shaded part and it does well.

Wind impacts my larger pgp's which span nearly 50 feet but the pgj's throw at a lower angle and are less impacted by wind. From what I've read wind speeds are lower late evening early morning and my schedules are set to end before sunrise which lessens the impact of wind.

It's been a number of years since I lived in LA, I still remember the Santa Ana winds and the plans would take off from the opposite direction from Burbank, all that to say I'm not sure if there is a specific time of day that the costal winds are lower, but I believe smaller rotors would help unless you want to add more zones.


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