Home garden and lawn irrigation: zones, sprinklers and drip.
An automatic system waters the lawn and the beds while you are busy or away, but only if each part of the garden gets its own zone. Before you buy, you are deciding how to split the garden, which sprinklers suit the lawn, where drip goes and how long each zone runs. This guide gives you the rules the makers' design guides use, a run-time example and a checklist for a quote.
Written for homeowners.
Start with the water you have
A garden system can run from a borehole pump, from a storage tank with a small pump, or from the town supply. Whichever you have, the design starts from the flow and the pressure it gives. On a town supply, Hunter's design guide measures the pressure with a gauge on the outside tap nearest the water meter, with no other water running. For a borehole or a tank, the pump's details give the pressure and the flow. If the supply also gives drinking water, as a town main or a house borehole does, fit a backflow preventer where the garden line leaves the drinking-water pipe, of the type the water supplier or a plumber specifies, so that garden water cannot flow back into it.
Unless the garden is very small, the supply cannot water all of it at once. That is why a system is split into zones that take turns. Two words are used throughout:
- Flow: how much water passes in a set time, in litres per hour (L/h) for a dripper, or cubic metres per hour (m³/h) for a pump or a pipe. One cubic metre is 1,000 litres.
- Pressure: how hard the water pushes inside the pipe, measured in bar.
Sizing an irrigation storage tankChoosing a pump for your water source
Split the garden into zones
A zone is a group of sprinklers or drip lines that one valve opens together, and every zone has its own valve. Hunter's design guide draws the lines between zones by sun and by plant type, so each zone gets the water its plants need. Two rules follow: sprinklers that rotate and sprinklers that spray are never on the same zone, because they put water down at very different rates; and trees are watered on their own, apart from the lawn and the shrubs.
A typical home garden ends up with zones like these:
- The lawn in full sun, on sprinklers.
- The lawn in shade, on its own sprinklers.
- Flower beds, shrubs and hedges, on drip line, split the same way by sun and shade.
- Trees, on bubblers or drip line.
Sources: Hunter Industries (2019), Residential Sprinkler System Design and Installation Guide (LIT-226), pages 6 and 9; Hunter Industries (2025), Irrigating Trees: best practices brochure (HI-042), pages 2 to 4.
A garden in two zones
The drawing shows a small garden with the lawn on one zone and the beds on another. Each zone has its own valve in a valve box, and the controller on the house wall opens them in turn, unless the rain sensor says it has rained.
- Lawn sprinklers: each throws its water as far as the next one, so no patch is missed
- Drip line in the bed: water drips beside each shrub
- Valve for zone 1, the lawn, in a valve box
- Valve for zone 2, the bed, in its own valve box
- Controller on the house wall: opens one zone at a time
- Rain sensor at the roof edge: stops the watering after rain
- Water supply: a tank, a borehole or the town supply
Sprinklers for the lawn, head to head
Head to head means each sprinkler throws its water all the way to the next sprinkler and to the one across from it. Without that overlap the lawn shows dry patches between the sprinklers, however long the system runs. Hunter's guide spaces small-area sprinklers 3 to 5 metres apart and large-area rotors 8 to 12 metres apart, with quarter-circle heads in the corners and half-circle heads along the edges. Rotors suit areas of about 8 by 8 metres and more.
Most home lawns use pop-up spray bodies, which rise to water and drop out of sight. They take fixed spray nozzles or MP Rotator nozzles. MP Rotators turn slowly in streams and put down about 10 mm of water an hour, slowly and evenly, so less of it runs off; they throw 2.5 to 10.7 metres across Hunter's range, and 2.5 to 9.1 metres with the nozzles in our store. Hunter pairs them with a pressure-regulated body: the PRS40, which holds 2.8 bar, for their full throw, or the PRS30, at 2.1 bar, for the shortest. The regulated body in our store is the PRS30. For bigger lawns, gear-driven rotors such as the PGP Ultra throw 4.9 to 14 metres.
On a slope, choose heads with a check valve, which stops the water in the pipe draining out of the lowest sprinklers after each run. The I-20 rotor has one built in.
Hunter Pro-Spray pop-up bodyHunter MP Rotator nozzleHunter PGP Ultra rotorHunter I-20 rotor
Sources: Hunter Industries (2019), Residential Sprinkler System Design and Installation Guide (LIT-226), pages 6 and 8; Hunter Industries, Standard MP Rotator nozzle: specifications; Hunter Industries, PGP Ultra rotor: specifications; Hunter Industries, I-20 rotor: features.
Drip for beds, hedges and trees
Beds, hedges and shrubs do better on drip than under sprinklers. The water goes to the roots instead of onto walls and paths, and less is lost to wind and heat.
Hunter's HDL-PC dripline is a 16 mm pipe with drippers built in every 30 or 45 cm, each giving 2.4 or 3.8 litres per hour. It is pressure-compensating: each dripper gives the same flow anywhere between 1 and 4.2 bar, so the far end of a bed gets as much as the near end. It needs water filtered to 120 mesh, or 125 microns.
A drip zone therefore needs a filter and a pressure regulator after its valve. Hunter's HFR filter regulator does both in one fitting: it filters to 150 mesh, or 100 microns, and lowers the pressure to 1.7 or 2.8 bar, depending on the model. A single tree or large shrub can have a bubbler over its root zone, set a little away from the trunk, or a few emitters of its own.
Hunter HDL-PC driplineHunter filter regulatorHunter PLD dripline fittingsHunter PCN bubbler nozzle, which fits a Pro-Spray bodyHunter HEB emitter
Sources: Hunter Industries (2015), Drip Irrigation Design and Installation Guide (LIT-496), pages 1 and 5; Hunter Industries (2026), Product Catalogue Vol. 41, EMEA metric edition, pages 81, 169, 172 and 190; Hunter Industries (2025), Irrigating Trees: best practices brochure (HI-042), pages 2 and 3.
The controller and the rain sensor
The controller opens one zone at a time for the run time you set. Hunter's X-Core has three programs with four start times each, run times of up to 4 hours per zone, a seasonal adjustment that shortens or lengthens every run at once, and Cycle and Soak, which splits a long run into short ones so the water soaks in on slopes and tight soils. Count your zones before you choose one: the store has 4, 6 and 8 zone models.
Where the valves are far from a power point, a battery controller such as the NODE sits in the valve box itself. The NODE works only with DC-latching solenoids: the one-zone NODE-100 comes with one, but the NODE-200 and NODE-400 do not, and a PGV valve comes with a standard 24 V solenoid, so each valve on those needs a DC-latching solenoid in its place. Each valve belongs in a valve box with a lid, never buried straight in the soil, so it can be reached.
A rain sensor such as the Mini-Clik stops the controller watering after a set amount of rain, and lets it start again once it dries. Mount it where rain falls straight on it, on a roof edge, a gutter or a fence post, and not under trees or where a sprinkler can reach it.
Hunter X-Core controllerHunter NODE battery controllerHunter Mini-Clik rain sensorHunter PGV zone valve
Sources: Hunter Industries, X-Core controller: features; Hunter Industries, NODE battery controller: features and specifications; Hunter Industries (2026), Product Catalogue Vol. 41, EMEA metric edition, pages 87 and 133; Hunter Industries, Mini-Clik rain sensor: features; Hunter Industries (2019), Residential Sprinkler System Design and Installation Guide (LIT-226), pages 17 and 19.
How long to run each zone
Run times come from how fast each kind of sprinkler puts water down, which makers give in millimetres an hour. Set the start times for early morning: Hunter's guide gives it as the least windy time, with the most pressure and the least evaporation, and advises against early evening, which leaves the lawn wet all night.
Sources: Hunter Industries (2019), Residential Sprinkler System Design and Installation Guide (LIT-226), page 26; Hunter Industries, Standard MP Rotator nozzle: precipitation rate and nozzle comparison chart; Hunter Industries, X-Core controller: Cycle and Soak and seasonal adjustment.
Before you ask for a quote
- A sketch or photos of the garden with rough sizes: the house, paths, beds, lawn and trees.
- Where the sun falls through the day, and which parts stay in shade.
- Where the water comes from: a borehole, a tank or the town supply, with a pressure reading or the pump's details.
- Where the controller can go, near a power point, and where a rain sensor can sit in open rain.
- Slopes, and any part of the garden that floods or stays wet.
- Which areas are lawn, beds, hedges, trees or pots.
- Who will look after the system, and how often they will check it.
Keeping it working
Hunter's guide advises running the system by hand at regular intervals to see that every zone works, and cleaning the sprinklers. At the start of each dry season, run each zone, check the sprinklers turn, reach the next one and sit level with the ground, clean the filters, and set the controller for the season.
Irrigation maintenance through the seasonSeven causes of drip irrigation failure
Sources: Hunter Industries (2019), Residential Sprinkler System Design and Installation Guide (LIT-226), page 26; Hunter Industries, Spring start-up guide.
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