birchlake
Member
Hi All,
I have a new residential sprinkler system, using lake water and powered by a Myers 2 stage pump. System is designed very well and is efficient.
I have about 25 Hunter I-20 rotor heads and these are working perfectly and have no issue with lake water.
The issue I am having is the smaller sprinkler heads as those have a filter as part of the head and the filters are getting clogged frequently. The heads in question are the Hunter MP-Rotator heads and also Rainbird VAN nozzle heads. It is mostly very tiny pieces of lake weeds that are making it through my lake intake screen and clogging the head filters. I have some very small areas of lawn that need irrigation and that is why my installer had to use some of these smaller heads instead of the I-20s in those tight quarters.
I already have tried two things. My installer brought me a different intake screen with the smallest slots that he could find, smaller than the slots on the original intake screen. That didn't help. I then bought a KLEEN-FLO filter screen which I wrapped around my intake screen. The Kleen-Flo screen was smaller than the slots on my PVC intake screen and did help a little bit, but the head filters still clog frequently. I took the two head filters that are clogging down to the lake and placed them on top the Kleen-Flo screen for comparison. The Kleen-Flo definitely has square holes that are quite a bit larger than the mesh on the sprinkler filters so I can understand how the small lake material is making it through the line and up into the sprinkler head filters.
To solve this, I believe that I need to have smaller mesh on the intake pipe than the mesh on the head filters.
I found online a company named RUSCO offers three different what they call "basket strainers" (AKA intake screens) designed for irrigation systems. They offer a 24 mesh, a 60 mesh and a 100 mesh. The 24 mesh I don't believe would be enough so I think that one is out.
The 100 mesh strainer filters down to 152 microns which is .0059 inches. I am leaning towards going with the 100 mesh but I'm wondering if 100 mesh might be too small and the strainer may clog quickly, impeding flow.
The 60 mesh may be enough though too, and is still under consideration. The mesh size on the sprinkler head filters are in the 35-40 mesh range according to Hunter/Rainbird documentation. So if I filter at 60 mesh at the lake screen, maybe that will be enough prevent clogging of the 35-40 mesh head filters? I have a request into Rusco engineering for their recommendation but haven't yet heard back from them.
http://www.rusco.com/index.php/product1/basket-strainer
My thought is that I could easily step into the lake and brush off the basket strainer weekly or as needed, which is one heck of a lot easier than cleaning the filters on 14 sprinkler heads and then having to make slight adjustments to some of them after doing so!
Any recommendations on mesh size, if I go with a Rusco unit? Or any other ideas? I thought tonight about pulling the filters out on a couple of the Rainbird VAN Nozzle heads as an experiment to see if the nozzle heads would get clogged without the filters, but I don't have much confidence of that working long term as I think the nozzle heads will eventually clog.
Thanks for any ideas!
I have a new residential sprinkler system, using lake water and powered by a Myers 2 stage pump. System is designed very well and is efficient.
I have about 25 Hunter I-20 rotor heads and these are working perfectly and have no issue with lake water.
The issue I am having is the smaller sprinkler heads as those have a filter as part of the head and the filters are getting clogged frequently. The heads in question are the Hunter MP-Rotator heads and also Rainbird VAN nozzle heads. It is mostly very tiny pieces of lake weeds that are making it through my lake intake screen and clogging the head filters. I have some very small areas of lawn that need irrigation and that is why my installer had to use some of these smaller heads instead of the I-20s in those tight quarters.
I already have tried two things. My installer brought me a different intake screen with the smallest slots that he could find, smaller than the slots on the original intake screen. That didn't help. I then bought a KLEEN-FLO filter screen which I wrapped around my intake screen. The Kleen-Flo screen was smaller than the slots on my PVC intake screen and did help a little bit, but the head filters still clog frequently. I took the two head filters that are clogging down to the lake and placed them on top the Kleen-Flo screen for comparison. The Kleen-Flo definitely has square holes that are quite a bit larger than the mesh on the sprinkler filters so I can understand how the small lake material is making it through the line and up into the sprinkler head filters.
To solve this, I believe that I need to have smaller mesh on the intake pipe than the mesh on the head filters.
I found online a company named RUSCO offers three different what they call "basket strainers" (AKA intake screens) designed for irrigation systems. They offer a 24 mesh, a 60 mesh and a 100 mesh. The 24 mesh I don't believe would be enough so I think that one is out.
The 100 mesh strainer filters down to 152 microns which is .0059 inches. I am leaning towards going with the 100 mesh but I'm wondering if 100 mesh might be too small and the strainer may clog quickly, impeding flow.
The 60 mesh may be enough though too, and is still under consideration. The mesh size on the sprinkler head filters are in the 35-40 mesh range according to Hunter/Rainbird documentation. So if I filter at 60 mesh at the lake screen, maybe that will be enough prevent clogging of the 35-40 mesh head filters? I have a request into Rusco engineering for their recommendation but haven't yet heard back from them.
http://www.rusco.com/index.php/product1/basket-strainer
My thought is that I could easily step into the lake and brush off the basket strainer weekly or as needed, which is one heck of a lot easier than cleaning the filters on 14 sprinkler heads and then having to make slight adjustments to some of them after doing so!
Any recommendations on mesh size, if I go with a Rusco unit? Or any other ideas? I thought tonight about pulling the filters out on a couple of the Rainbird VAN Nozzle heads as an experiment to see if the nozzle heads would get clogged without the filters, but I don't have much confidence of that working long term as I think the nozzle heads will eventually clog.
Thanks for any ideas!
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