Sprinkler recommendations

We've just had an outside tap fitted and want to buy a sprinkler for watering the garden during the summer. Does anyone have any good recommendations? It's not an enormous space but all laid to lawn and we want to avoid the ground becoming too cracked if we get another hot summer like last year.

 

Kellys-eye, morning
I use a sprinkler hose. 15 metres long....a soaker side to it too. For me it’s ideal.
I move it every half hour or so

 

We've a small garden and I put these in about ten years ago. It's speed-fit pipe and two sprinkler heads from eBay. Solved the problem of watering the lawn for about fifty quid.


It runs off mains pressure.

We also have a leaky hose system that waters all the beds.

 

Loving the idea of the leaky hose - we have one of them lurking in the shed that should work nicely! Thanks for your suggestions.

 

I have one of these.

Oscillating sprinkler OS 5.320 SV | Kärcher UK

Good adjustability options.

 

The leaky hose covers the bed next to the patio, the rockery and the long side bed and the bed in front of the back fence. It has a dedicated tap above the drain at the corner of the house outside the kitchen window.
A pipe runs from there, under the path and emerges behind what was the koi pool waterfall. At each end of the rockery I have one of these.



By changing one of the four settings on them, 1, 2, 1+2, or STOP, I can water everything or one particular section or any two of three. I've also a Hoselock programmable control, which will turn the water on for a number of different times each day. Handy if you're going on holiday.

But mostly, when the beds need a water as they did today. I just turn it on in the evening to water the lot and turn it off (when I remember) the following day.

At the moment, my pop up sprinklers are still working, but suffering from a drop in pressure. That's because those robber barons United Utilities who are only concerned with profits, not fixing leaks, have not increased the pressure, despite all the new builds in South Manchester which are drawing water from the same system. Consequently, I had to remove the return springs in both heads a couple of years ago, as they wouldn't "pop up" with the springs in, as the pressure wasn't enough to overcome them.
So now they do pop up, but I have to gently push them down with my foot after watering. No big deal. But with the closure of my koi pool I have a surplus central heating pump which used to power the filter of my quarantine tank.
So I may experiment with putting that in the feed pipe for the sprinklers.

 

The main thing for sprinklers is just area coverage - and not just area, but the shape of that area too. If you've got a rectangular garden, a rotary sprinkler is a dead loss. I've not found much difference between cheap garden centre sprinklers and expensive Hozelock ones for how they soak aa area, but the more expensive ones generally do a larger area and have more options for adjusting to fit the area.

 

As Graham said above think about area cover. I prefer the oscillating bar type of sprinkler, as Mike showed. These range from Wilkos at £9 to £45 .
I also have a flying saucer type, as photo, not very good in my opinion as they don't seem to water the full spray area.