Battleground: Front Yard

As a child my biggest weekend fret was which friend I was going to play with. As a teenager it was who I was going to the football game with and who am I hanging out with after. In college it was what city or state to drive to and as an adult my biggest worry about the weekend is what sprinkler section I am going to try to fix.
Since moving to this house I have replaced countless sprinkler heads, some pipe sections and the entire main sprinkler valve system. Despite winning these small battles the war is far from over. I have gained adequate coverage in the backyard by replacing 4 of the rotary head sprinklers. The side gardens seem to be flourishing and keeping damp soil but my ultimate nemesis has become the front yard main grass area. I have had to seed multiple sections that died from inadequate watering , which by the way I learned there is a difference between fescue and St. Augustine, and I have replaced 4 sprinkler heads and a small section of pipe. If you have replaced sprinklers in your grass area then you know that to accomplish this you must dig up your grass in a careful enough way to preserve the roots and replant the section of grass when you’re finished. This did not work out great for me and we now have several sections where the grass appears to be sinking. Despite my effort at repair I still have a dead patch looming in the front yard. Realizing the sprinkler head replacements were not accomplishing my mission I turned to making adjustments in the amount of water that was spraying from each sprinkler. Perhaps by limiting the spray on some I can boost pressure in others to shoot farther into the dead zone. Once again to no avail. Perhaps it was the type of sprinkler that I was using so I switched to high end Rain Bird quality firepower but still the water pressure enemy thwarted my plans. Now after months of study and countless diagrams (and some help from my wife) I think I may have plotted a battle plan to outsmart my foe. If you review the below drawing of my front yard you will notice that I have 11 sprinklers on a single valve line. 11!!! Way too many for a single line and that number doesn’t include several drip systems that also run off of the same line. By capping off the sprinklers marked with an "X" I can reduce the output by 5 sprinkler heads which will in turn boost the pressure within the pipes. But if I cap off the sprinkler heads how will the grass get water you ask? Well, the two marked with an "R" will become rotary head sprinklers and will cover a 180 degree area up to 20 feet. This should (in theory) allow the other sprinklers to build enough pressure to spray a normal distance thereby eliminating the dead zone. Game on! 


Eric