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Lawn irrigation is the process of getting water to your lawn, grass and all, for it to grow. There are five main types of lawn irrigation methods:

• Manual irrigation puts you in charge of the flow of water. Using a sprinkler head on your hose is best to evenly distribute the water across your entire lawn. This doesn’t take much time but requires you to be physically outside holding the hose. 

• Above-ground sprinklers attach to your hose and rotate or oscillate around your lawn. Since these are above-ground, they’ll need to be moved when it’s time to mow, and depending on the size of your property, you might need to move it around your yard for full coverage. 

• In-ground sprinklers are flush with the ground when not in use but pop up above the ground level when it's time to water the lawn. Piping for these sprinklers is all found underground, and there are different types of sprinkler heads for different uses and lawn sizes. 

• Drip irrigation involves drip lines that are more efficient than sprinklers for more extensive lawns. This involves a lot of digging since they are installed underground, but it makes it easy for you to mow.

• Rainwater collection and irrigation uses nature’s precipitation to water your lawn. This option might not be available in every area since semi-reliable rainfall is needed, though the barrels for this system can range from 15 gallons to 10,000 gallons or more.

You can calculate the number of sprinklers per zone by looking at your water pressure (PSI), flow rate (GPM), and the performance of your sprinkler. Depending on the water pressure, the sprinkler head will use different amounts of water. As an example, at 40 PSI, a rotor head might use 3.5 GPM. If your water capacity is 10 GPM, you can place three heads in each zone. 

Most homeowners leave their sprinkler timer on at all times—and then the timer turns sprinklers on and off as it’s been programmed to do. As to how long you should run your sprinkler, the answer to that question depends on what types of plants and soil you have, how hot it is where you live, how established your landscaping is, and other factors. However, you can start with 30 minutes, three times per week.

Generally 1-3 days, including setup and tuning for optimal coverage.