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Better Sprinkler Head
an improved sprinkler head for irrigating a residential lawn -- no overshoot or dead zones | |
My lawns are square, rectangular, irregular shaped. Regardless my standard sprinkler heads either overshoot to cover lawn or have deadzonez
I propose a better sprinkler head to solve this. It can be connected by WiFi but doesn't use electric wiring for power since it relies on water pressure to
generate power. As the head swivels I can set the distance sprayed by the small up/down piece that controls water spitting -- this is controlled by settings in WiFi to dynamically adjust the piece height. Electromagnetic. Power is all generated by water pressure. The sprinkler head can now be placed in one corner and can do any distance up to max including irregular shapes without overshoot spray or dead zone. The sprinkler head allows us to adjust spit distance for each 1 degree movement of the 360' head spin.
[link]
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Good idea. Wind will be a problem. |
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Wind can also by dynamically adjusted for, mostly. |
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// The sprinkler head can now be placed in one corner...
//
If you're going to go to this much trouble to begin with,
don't mount the sprinkler on the ground where you can still
stub your toe on it. Mount it under the eaves on the
house. |
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As a bonus, have a lawn and garden defense mode to squirt
any wildlife that ventures into your yard or flower gardens. |
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I tried Moosehead but the antlers scratched my stomach. |
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Since we're talking WiFi here, modify a few of those solar-charged garden lights and add a sensor that relays its location the sprinkler head. Then place these WiFi enabled lights at the extreme points along the edges of the lawn area to define the limits of where you want the water to go. |
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I like this but not the wifi piece. Freaking wifi. It should entirely be water powered. Each sprinkler head would be surrounded by a circle with pegs like a clock face. Each "hour" would have a distance that the sprinkler would shoot when facing that direction. Distance would be determined by peg depth, as the pegs themselves occlude water flow. The shallowest placement minimally impedes water flow and so results in greatest distance and the deepest placement completely occludes flow, for when rotating head faces the street. |
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This same device will double as a charming fountain. The pegs now completely occlude lateral water spray (maximal depth placement) but are hollow, directing spray upwards. These pegs are now hollow and allow flow within the peg. A laterally placed screw completely occudes the lumen of the peg while in sprinkler mode but by backing it out, one allows flow to varying degree within the peg. Make each peg different for a rising and falling fountain effect. |
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Pegs can be placed to allow lateral spray, vertical spray, some of each from the same peg, or a mix of lateral and vertical as the device turns atop the sprinkler head, powered by flowing water. |
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BUNGCO engineers are still pondering how to keep the thing rotating during periods of no flow: for example a sprinkler from which you want no water during 90 degrees of its rotation. |
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[+] for your version, [bungston]! |
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I suggest a flywheel, with the caveat that a flywheel momentous
enough to carry the rotor past eleven fully occluding pegs could be
difficult for the one remaining flow-permitting twelfth of the
rotation to recharge. So maybe it would be necessary to say that
the user may only turn off up to a certain number of twelfths. |
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As well, it might be difficult to get a quite momentous flywheel
started. Perhaps a secondary outlet would work for that, watering
the grass immediately around the sprinkler. That would solve the
flywheel problem too. |
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Another approach is an accumulator after the turbine, allowing
flow through the turbine to continue while output is blocked,
though that has the disadvantage of requiring something like a
stretchy membrane, which likely wouldn't last long outdoors. |
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I wonder if continuous turn could be produced by a spring. Popup sprinkers use a spring (or more correctly the spring pops them back down). Could water pressure compress a spring which in turn decompresses and turns the head? On cessation of flow the spring discharges and keeps up turning until flow resumes, again compressing the spring. |
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