I have only installed several systems from first cut to final tweaking..You can use MS Excel for designing after you know pressures and pipe types/lateral distance along with backflow. Granted once you do a few in certain areas you know what PSI the homes have. Head to head is good since you will NOT get the dry spots WHEN pressure in homes go down. Most my homes have over 75 PSI before backflow (when I use 1" from main). But during dry periods it wil drop to below 60 psi. If you design for 75 PSI and get just over the limit of the head (RAD), once the PSI drops, you will not get proper coverage (dry triangles). I do head to head on my lawns and my neighbor just have a system installed. They did not know I do it on the side. Not saying names but a small yard at about 10,000 sq/ft and the heads are WAY to far apart. When they operate it you are lucky if they cover the area. Sad when installers do this to save from putting in 2 heads. They have three head in same distance I have 5 to 6. Heads are cheap and so is funny pipe. And yes you will get over coverage and your precip rate will be high but you can figure out length of time you need to run. Need to now soil conditions too. I just finished my other half my yard. Total for yard of about 95 Hunter PGPÂs (lawn only), 17 zones, over 2,500 ft of poly etc..

It's totally possible Jeremy, a Die is commonly use for making threads on blank steel bolt not to mention on plastic material such as riser pipe , you can acquire them at some hardware stores. The idea is to customize your own length, whether to resume a used broken pipe or start from a blank riser, a coupler is also an option but lesser the joint the better the performance, my pipe breaks often by accident from garden service and I am tire of running to stores for parts. Photo Houzz Photo

Renee I use McMaster Carr for specialty items that are hard to find anywhere else. Normally I don't buy from venders that don't quote shipping costs. However they are an exception. They ship very quickly and the shipping costs seem to be at or below actual shipping costs. I bought nozzles for my external water spray system that I use to protect my house from wildfire. I found I could use many of the same nozzles for the gardens. I buy brass fittings from Plumbing Fittings Direct. You will pay about half what you pay from your local improvement center if you meet the fifty dollar minimum for free shipping. And the selection is much better. A brass 1/2 x 1/4 inch threaded brass reducing bushing is only about fifty cents more than the same thing in PVC. They have a good selection of bushings, threaded nineties and forty fives, tees and reducing tees. Your gardens are beautiful. Here is a link that might be useful: Brass Fittings

Hi L: Sudden rise in amperage past motor safe limit when in operation. The condition can be caused by a solid getting wedged between the impeller and the bowl causing drag, other times it can actually increase the pump's flow rate which of course is more work and higher amps. It has been my experience that when anything happens to the impeller that decreases it's ability to pump, like swallowing a brick chunk and breaking off a vain, the amperage decreases along with the flow rate. Similarly, if the voulte gets plugged, the flow rate goes down along with the amperage. It is a 3-ph pump, all 3 legs read nearly identical amps and volts and the voltage is balanced across legs 1-2, 1-3 and 2-3. Best guess, partially jammed inpeller. Oh yes, the partner pump in the wet well checks out fine eliminating the possibility of a down stream obstruction, speaking of which... the check valve for the pump will be the first thing to check for an obstruction when I can get help. The pumps and check valves are in a hazardous environment with lousy access, no way in Hades I'm dealing with that alone! Being that this is a raw sewage application, an upstream commutator (grinder) would likely eliminate the possibility of solids ever causing the pumps to become jammed. The pump is 1 1/2 y.o.. It replaced a pump that had been in service for 26 yrs., same make and model. Sadly, the best I can do for scheduled maintenance is checking voltage and amperage, wish I had a megger for resistance. In addition, I have both pumps on individual clocks that record amt. of run time. I check and record run time twice daily and have records going back about 6 years for reference and comparative purposes. The clocks have been money very well spent. The best I can do for flow is a v-notch weir, not too precise.