sprinkler design

How Many Rain Bird 5000 Sprinkler Heads on 1 1/4" PVC at 45 PSI?

How Many Rain Bird 5000 Sprinkler Heads on 1 1/4" PVC at 45 PSI? You can safely run 6 to 8 Rain Bird 5000 rotor heads on a 1 1/4-inch PVC lateral at 45 PSI, with 7 heads being the reliable planning number. The limit is flow, not pressure: 1 1/4-inch Schedule 40 PVC carries about 23 GPM at the irrigation-standard 5 ft/s velocity, and a Rain Bird 5000 at 45 PSI draws roughly 1.5 to 3.5 GPM per head depending on nozzle. Divide 23 GPM by a typical 3 GPM per head and you get just under 8. Size your own zone with our Sprinkler Coverage Calculator(/garden/sprinkler-coverage-calculator). Last spring I rebuilt a friend's front-yard zone that was choking eight 5000 heads on a single 1-inch lateral. The last two rotors barely turned over. At 2.6 GPM per head, those eight heads pulled 20.8 GPM through 1-inch pipe — a...