Schematic Irrigation

Note: The following catalog of content covered in this webinar is time stamped to allow you to follow along or skip to sections of the video that are relevant to your questions. You can also search for content on this page using the FIND command in your browser (CTRL + F in Windows, Command + F in Mac OS.)

• Intro/TOC
• What is Schematic Irrigation, and What is Included?
  • Benefits of Schematic Irrigation
  • Excel vs. Schematic
  • Should You Trust Our Numbers?
  • How to Confirm Our Flow Calculations
  • Some Important Equations
• Schematic Irrigation Tips and Tricks
  • Placing Schematic Areas
  • Adding a New Schematic Area
  • When Not to Use Schematic Irrigation
  • Running a Schematic Total and Making Edits

0:00 – 7:30: Intro/TOC

7:31 – 16:24: What is Schematic Irrigation, and What is Included?

Purpose of Schematic Irrigation: Helps you develop a quick initial analysis of what your approximate demand and system requirements might be.

Benefits of Schematic Irrigation

• Easier revisions
• Producing a good-looking 20% submittal without doing a lot of work.
  • Being able to show where the mainline and valves are going.
• Determining and/or validating your point of connection (POC) size.
• Getting a quick idea of what your watering window will be.
• When running a schedule, you get square footage for each area.
• Have something tangible for the client to see.

Excel vs. Schematic (10:48)

• What is going to be easier to revise?
• What is going to be more accurate?
• What is going to present better to a client?
• If it took the same amount of time …

Should you trust our numbers? (13:03)

No! Not because our numbers are wrong, but because our Schematic Irrigation tool calculates what amounts to standard or typical precipitation rates. We encourage you to verify and even tweak the numbers as needed.

How to Confirm Our Flow Calculations (14:10):

• What is the area to be covered?
• How much water are you planning on applying?
• How long will the runtime be?
• How many runtimes will you have?

Some Important Equations:

• PR = (96.25 x GPM) / Area
• GPM = ((((Area x (Water to be applied)) x 7.48) / Quantity of runtimes) / Length of runtime

16:25 – end: Schematic Irrigation Tips and Tricks

Using the Site Dimension tool to make a rough determination of the area(s) we’ll be working with (19:40)

Note: You can freeze the dimension layer with the LAYFREEZE command, even if the dimensions are in an Xref.

Using the BOUNDARY command to turn a polyline area into an enclosed boundary (21:40)

Using the NCOPY command to select the lines to turn into a boundary (Note that BOUNDARY will create a cleaner boundary.) (23:57)

Using our SuperJoin tool to join linework (25:45)

The Schematic palette (based on the current Preference Set) (27:15)

Note: Do not make changes to the Schematic palette unless you’ve discussed them with and had them approved by your colleagues.

Placing small Schematic Areas as references (28:12)

Running a Schematic Irrigation schedule to only show descriptions of Schematic Areas (29:00)

Placing Schematic Areas (31:05)

Note that the flow of each area, based on that area’s precipitation rate, will appear next to the area.

Editing the existing Schematic areas (32:00)

Adding a New Schematic Area (32:27)

Example of raw data showing the necessary precip rate for a Schematic area & adding that data to the new Schematic area (35:14)

When Not to Use Schematic Irrigation (38:50)

• Drip emitters: These areas will depend heavily on their own square footage, as well as your placement of the emitters themselves. Therefore, it might not be worth the time to create Schematic areas for drip emitter areas.

• Rotors: Schematic areas for rotors require a great deal of data verification.

Rotors are a bit tricky when it comes to precipitation rate. Manufacturers will often base their rates on either square or triangular spacing, and rotors are typically only placed in a 180-degree pattern. As a result, the precip rates can become skewed when using Schematic Irrigation to account for designs that will include rotors.

Splitting a Schematic area into half- and full-head regions to increase its accuracy (42:15)

Checking the manufacturer’s equipment page to account for specific equipment in the Schematic plan (43:00)

Selecting outer and inner boundaries to place a Schematic area within another Schematic area, accounting for different head placement patterns and precip rates (43:40)

Running a Schematic Total and Making Edits (46:20)

Placing a water source and backflow device (47:20)

The backflow device is necessary at this point because backflow devices tend to cause significant pressure loss, and we need to account for that loss with our Schematic plan.

Placing valves within Schematic areas and calling out the valves (47:50)

This step allows us to see the flow required for each valve.

Sizing the theoretical lateral pipes that will be required for the valves we’ve placed (50:10)

Drawing the lateral pipes and sizing the laterals again (51:40)

Sizing the mainline pipe and checking the Critical Analysis (52:40)

Placing a Watering Schedule to ensure that the estimated rates from the Schematic plan will be sufficient for the requirements of our actual design (53:40)

Using our Match Properties tool to update the rates in our different Schematic areas (56:00)

Placing an Irrigation Schedule to help estimate costs (57:10)

You can also send the schedule to a spreadsheet and make edits there in order to compare and contrast potential costs, for example.

Using CopyClip to copy and paste Schematic Areas (59:00)

CopyClip is the only method you should be using to copy and paste Schematic areas.